Hi, I am the creator and maintainer of Pixture Reloaded and I was thinking it might be good to hear from you people, the ones actually using this theme, what you would like see in the Pixture Reloaded theme. Perhaps you think something needs to be removed or just changed. Let us know, it would great to have constructive feedback.

Recently I added Superfish drop menus, so I suppose I've done my dash - you probably have many different ideas and that's what I'd like to hear about.

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phsc’s picture

phsc CreditAttribution: phsc commented

Hi jmburnz

Although I really like Pixture Reloaded as it is, I could imagine that these two points could make it even sleeker (when implemented in the same style as the rest of Pixture Reloaded):

1. In the left sidebar, where the navigation is normally located, the menu entries could be styled similar to the navigation block in Amity Island theme (see http://demo.themeshark.com/amity_island/). That means, the menu entries could be block highlighted when hovering over or when active. And you could also add a (dotted) line between the menu entries to distinguish them more clearly. The points and arrows are good and should be kept.

2. I really like tab styles (always and everywhere :-D). That's why I would like to see tabs in Pixture Reloaded (see http://www.kvw.be/deco/). I know, that this won't probably be compatible with Superfish menu (and Superfish menu is prio 1 ;-) ) when implementing for menus, but maybe you have an idea to use this idea somewhere else.

Best regards and please keep up your excellent work!
Thanks!

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

I like both ideas actually. Perhaps not as defaults but certainly as options, probably via theme settings.

For example, having a theme settings such as "Use tabbed menu for Primary and Superfish menus" and "Use block style X for menu blocks" sort of thing.

I had thought of doing tabs as a way of solving the "no secondary menu" issue, it would also open up the black bar (the current location of the Primary and Sueprfish menu items) for an alternative Horizontal Superish menu. Superfish can do this but I did not include it since there was not real logical place to show it, since its not the sort of thing I think should hover over other elements, but rather to have its own place.

Superfish will play with tabs just fine, since its just a matter of restyling the top level li as a sliding door tab, and there should be enough in base.png to do that as is (with minor mods).

Thanks for the feedback, great stuff.

Tebb’s picture

Tebb CreditAttribution: Tebb commented

Hi Jeff.

Support for RTL languages would be an interesting challenge for you wouldn't it? :)

I don't know if this is difficult to achieve and I'm assuming it isn't done already. Most themes don't mention RTL support. I'm assuming this means it's not included. I don't have a D6 site to try it on yet to find out for myself, but should have one for testing next week.

I'm moving to D6 for it's improved multilingual features and Arabic is one of the proposed site languages which needs RTL support.

Pixture reloaded and Multiflex-3 are the two themes I want to try. I'm not good at imagining what things will look like!

Any interest to you?

Regards,

Dru-p

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

Absolutely interesting! Have to admit I know nothing about supporting RTL and at the moment I dont really have the time to delve into it (I'll do some basic reading about it).

Be good to let me know how the tests go, if you have issues just start a new issue we'll make this a feature request all on its own.

Cheers.

beedaddy’s picture

beedaddy CreditAttribution: beedaddy commented

I would really appreciate the support of secondary links in the menu bar. Perhaps aligned to the right and smaller than the "normal" menu links?

Regards
Martin

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

This is something I have thought about quite a lot and in the end I decided to deprecate support for menu bar secondary links. The reason for this is that I couldn't find a way to make them work (visually) with the current header design, and lets be frank, Pixture is all about the visuals and that's all its really got going for it (liquid layout is good also).

That said, I will be looking more closely at including the primary menu as tabs (via a theme setting) which would open up the black menu bar for another set of links, e.g the secondary menu...

I dont want to put secondary menus in the same horizontal space as the primary links, mainly because in future versions I would like to include a setting that allows you to centre or right align the primary or superfish menu (aka tapestry).

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

I'm adding my own wishlist item. CSS sprites.

The performance of PL is not stunning, with so many image requests I think we can improve performance by using a CSS sprite, be interesting if I can make this work.

If anyone else has done this with a colourable theme I would very much appreciate any tips.

phsc’s picture

phsc CreditAttribution: phsc commented

I have another idea, that would also help to reduce image requests. You could use jQuery for round corners instead of images. I think this could improve performance because Pixture Reloaded uses quite a lot of round corners (which are very stylish). What do you think?

Here are two jQuery Plugins (I don't know which one is better):
1) jquery-roundcorners-canvas
http://plugins.jquery.com/project/jquery-roundcorners-canvas
2) JQuery Curvy Corners
http://plugins.jquery.com/project/curvy-corners

Best regards

root_of_roots’s picture

root_of_roots CreditAttribution: root_of_roots commented

I guess something that would be nice would be to have fly-out menus for the Navigation block.

Also - something I have been looking into how to apply.

Fluid width between two dimension. For example to have a website (let's say - in the Holy Grail fluid width type) that is fluid width - and then be able to specify what width it can be fluid between. For example, only fluid between 800px to 1300px. Any resolutions above 1300px will see it at 1300px width and any resolutions below 800px will have to view it at 800px (meaning they would have to scroll). Someone who has a resolution of 1000px will see it at 1000px because 1000px > 800px < 1300px. Now people have monitors that are so wide they totally blow a website out of proportion and stretch like a black hole.

What you are doing is great! Thanks a lot!

Best Regards!
-ROR

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

@ROR - Hi dude, actually PL already does the fluid between two dimensions - it wont let you go below 800px in the settings and the max-width is 1300px, otherwise the rounded corners on nodes will break.

Flyouts can actually be done with Superfish, if you know how:) Also there's the nice menus module. Superfish is really quite flexible, its worth digging into, I might look into it in the future. I would really love to get a horizontal hover menu working, which would work with tabs etc, that will be a theme setting, so I could look at working in a theme setting for flyouts on menu blocks (could be tricky, no promises:).

Thanks for the positive feedback, its a lot of work building a theme and supporting it here, and time consuming, so its really great to have some positive words of encouragement!

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

@phsc - This is something I'm going to work on with my other theme "Newswire", and will most certainly look at implementing with PL (if its possible to do so cleanly and still support the majority of users). I think this may be quite possible with the new color.module 08 (its freakin cool).

root_of_roots’s picture

root_of_roots CreditAttribution: root_of_roots commented

@jmburnz

Great. The 1300px however, was just a number I thought up. I guess if I wanted it different (i.e. 800px-900px or 800px-1500px) I could just find the CSS directive and change it?

I'll be sure to dig into Superfish. Once I practice with it and play around with it I might begin applying it to other themes (if wanted). That is not a Drupal module (like nice_menus) thought, but rather a jQuery plugin, right?

I'll be sure to refer your website Adaptivethemes.com to anyone who I meet looking for some IT work.

Once again: Great work!

Best Regards
-ROR

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

Look in layout.css, very near to the top...

#page {
  margin: 0 auto;
  padding: 0px;
  max-width: 1300px;
  min-width: 770px;
}

It says min-width 770px, but actually the theme settings wont allow for less than 800px, but will allow up to 1600, but the css will wipe that out, basically I'm saying I haven't fixed the inconsistency up yet, and I should...

Superfish is a jquery plugin - correct. The drop menus will work without it (revert to basic Suckerfish style drop menus) in most major browsers (but not IE6), however I decided to load the JavaScript for all since you get the mouse out feature and the animate feature (mouse out is a great usability improvement over suckerfish menus, which snap shut if your mouse work is less than perfect).

Cheers.

Troodon’s picture

Troodon CreditAttribution: Troodon commented
FileSize
collapsible.jpg20.12 KB

Hello,

Something I'd rather like is a collapsible region that runs the width of the page just under the superfish menu, but above the side bars and content regions. The idea being an area for a broad rotating banner on the front page e.g. something like this or as shown in the attachment. Though perhaps there are better ways of laying out the front page in a custom format?

Thanks.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

@Troodon - seems like a reasonable request and very easy to implement (always like that... he he).

Its pretty easy to do this yourself, but I agree, it would make the theme more attractive to have more block region options (my other theme Newswire has zillions of them...).

What am I thinking! Pixture Reloaded already does this - the Header Blocks region! Sorry for the confusion, my brain was on holiday for a moment there... he he.

lomz’s picture

lomz CreditAttribution: lomz commented

Just following.

davidmoore’s picture

davidmoore CreditAttribution: davidmoore commented

I am looking to use pixture reloaded as one of the optional themes on my website. I particularly like the superfish menus. But i find the current font used for the menus etc does not display cleanly in Firefox. It is OK in I.E.

pengi’s picture

pengi CreditAttribution: pengi commented

User blocks/regions in the header region would be great. I've not used panels but am guessing that when they're ready for 6.x, they might be able to emulate blocks? The option to have 1 or 2 or 3.

Also, I've never used secondary links on any drupal theme. But I'd really like to have something like that...a behavior that is common (web in general, I don't think drupal secondary menus are used like this?) is when a primary link is chosen, the secondary links are populated by subtopics. So if user clicks primary link menu item "Sports" a set of links below primary links would be populated with football baseball tennis whatever.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

@pengi

the user blocks / panels stuff I will check out, thats all new to me and I know nothing about it, but will endevour to as it all sounds interesting.

As for secondary links in the theme, well to be frank that's probably not going to happen until I find the time to flesh out my idea to use tabs for primary links and put the secondary links in the black bar (tabs above it). This same idea would allow for a horizontal nav-bar style Superfish menu, like this - http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/#sample4 , but at the moment my time is zero to do anything, so if anyone else can code this and make a patch I would be more than happy to include it.

Other than that all I can suggest is if you want secondary menus you can do them in a block in a sidebar block or in the header region (so it could be done already with a bit of theme knowledge and effort).

DanPerTech’s picture

DanPerTech CreditAttribution: DanPerTech commented

I'm currently using Pixture and I think there are some good things in the Reloaded version. I would really like to use it, but it does not use the date format configured into drupal, and there is also some translations to do. Pixture does display the right date format in french, but not the Reloaded version.

I will certainly use it once this will be fixed... and It will be a pleasure to help you to test it! ;-)

Feature request: Possiility to change the fonts size used, and also have more regions, like 3 more regions on the top, and three regions on the bottom... and maybe the possibility to display a banner into the header!

That's my two cents for now... and sorry for my bad english! ;-)

Danny

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

@DanPerTech - Hi there, if you are having an issue please post it as a seperate issue with full details, examples and if possible a link to your site. I can't deal with an issue from this thread as it is a general discussion regarding the future development of PR.

Regarding the additional features you mention:

Font sizes: you can change the font size in the CSS to suit your taste. Currently I have no plans to include a theme setting for font sizes.

Extra regions: A lot of users want extra regions. This is something I will look at in the future but due to time commitments I cant do right now. If someone would submit a patch and it gets tested I would be more than happy to commit this head. I would suggest starting a seperate Support Request issue and ask someone to make a patch for this - you just might get lucky:)

DanPerTech’s picture

DanPerTech CreditAttribution: DanPerTech commented
Title: If you could change one thing in Pixture Reloaded, what would it be? » Date display in pixture reloaded
Assigned: Jeff Burnz » DanPerTech
Category: feature » support

In the original pixture, dates are display like the following:

Soumis par danper le ven, 19/09/2008 - 10:02

but in pixture reloaded:

septembre 19, 2008 par danper

... so I guess reloaded does not support date settings configured into drupal...

Please!!! ;-))

Danny

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented
Title: Future Directions of Pixture Reloaded - what would you like in the theme? » Date display in pixture reloaded

@DanPerTech - start another tread, this is for feature requests. I already pointed out you need to make a support request - not hijack this thread for your own use!

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented
Assigned: Jeff Burnz » DanPerTech

Changing the title back to something like it was...

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented
Version: 6.x-3.0 » 6.x-2.0-dev

Assigned back to me

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented
Title: Date display in pixture reloaded » Future Directions of Pixture Reloaded - what would you like in the theme?
Version: 6.x-2.0-dev » 6.x-3.0
Assigned: DanPerTech » Jeff Burnz
Category: support » feature
Andrew Schulman’s picture

Andrew Schulman CreditAttribution: Andrew Schulman commented
Title: Date display in pixture reloaded » Future Directions of Pixture Reloaded - what would you like in the theme?
Version: 6.x-2.0-dev » 6.x-3.0
Assigned: DanPerTech » Jeff Burnz

jmburnz, thanks for reloading pixture. I've been using pixture and I like the design a lot, but all those damn tables were driving me nuts. Tables, tables, everywhere.

Pixture reloaded-- no tables!

Thanks.
Andrew.

glennr’s picture

glennr CreditAttribution: glennr commented

Why pink? For the next version, I vote for silver or ash for the default colour :-)

Seriously, my main request for the next version is for the main (body class) font size to be set in ems instead of pixels.

Also, have you considered doing a light version of Reloaded (perhaps called "Unloaded") with fewer formatting and theme settings (eg no Color module)? You've done a great job with the CSS and template files -- for such a feature-rich theme, it's quite easy to follow. However, it would be handy to have a lighter version which would be easier to customise using CSS, but prettier "out of the box" than the typical starter theme. But definitely keep SuperFish, that's a killer feature.

On the other hand, the idea of adding JQuery rounded corners might have some merit, particularly if it's optional. Being able to turn off rounded corners (on either node teasers or sidebar blocks) would make the theme even more flexible.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment -- and for the great theme.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

@andrex593

Thanks for the feedback, yes, goodbye nested table hell, hello web standards:)

@glennr

In D7 we'll break with the Pink and move to ems as much as possible, using pixels and pink was in keeping with the original Pixture and that is all. I personally build the majority of my themes using ems.

I'm hoping color.module 08 will make it into D7, which really opens the door to ultimate colorable goodness, I'm looking forward to it.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

Ok, I'm finally closing this, I have no plans to add new features fo D6, anything new will go to D7.

pengi’s picture

pengi CreditAttribution: pengi commented

I was hoping for improved support of panels. We talked about that somewhere, I think in a different thread.

Panels provide such a boost to site customization. It seems to take a very long time for modules like views and cck and panels to make it to the new versions of Drupal. If this theme is static for D6, it would mean that I'd have to wait another year or whatever it's going to take to get everything to D7. I have actually not used Pixture Reloaded anywhere, because I can't cludge some things with it like I need to with plain Pixture, and the panels support I would need to be able to lose the cludges is not quite there.

Anyways, just a wish. I may eventually be able to move to PR, just have not found out how to do so yet.

nicholaspapazoglou’s picture

nicholaspapazoglou CreditAttribution: nicholaspapazoglou commented
Status: Closed (fixed) » Active

Is there any easy way to change the color of the black bar?

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented
Status: Active » Closed (fixed)

@npapazoglou - please open a new issue for your support request.

jeanrog’s picture

jeanrog CreditAttribution: jeanrog commented

Removed request after seeing that you've closed this thread.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

@pengi - mate, I asked you about 6 weeks ago to provide some feedback regarding specific issue with Panels in PR - thus far you, nor anyone else, has give me a single bit of feedback as to what issues you are having.

Basically you are asking me to take a day out of my working life to work through every possible Panels scenario in order to root out the issues.

If you want Panels support then how about giving some feedback about the issues, maybe some screenshots and details. And please no more non-answers like "I don't know" - anyone can setup a test site, install the modules and create the errors, take some screenshots and write about what they did to create the error - this provides me a lot of information I can use to quickly get to the root of the problem.

If you want this feature, then help make it a reality and be part of the process, rather than just sitting around waiting for someone else to make it happen.

pengi’s picture

pengi CreditAttribution: pengi commented

But we did have an interchange about the only issue that I discovered with PR and panels - that had to do with the setting in panels where setting it's style to be like a block wouldn't work. Someone who knows what they're talking about said it had to do with the css implementation of PR, but I think that was in a panels issue queue.

There might be more issues with panels and PR but that's the critical one for me.

I gave you the input that I could; I didn't see you putting a lot recently into PR, and I know you're doing a lot of other stuff so I figured I wouldn't hound you about it.

Unfortunately I've almost zero exposure to panels so I am not a great tire kicker in that regards.

pengi’s picture

pengi CreditAttribution: pengi commented

I didn't expect any more releases of PR 6.x but I'm glad to see a new version out. The release notes don't mention anything about changes to PR with regards to panels. I'd not posted more about that, since you seemed rather unhappy about my bringing up the subject, and didn't respond to my last input here. But I will now, in light of the new release. Did you check out the panel block styling CSS issue? Any chance that will get fixed?

Optalgin’s picture

Optalgin CreditAttribution: Optalgin commented

I've created an initial version of RTL support
You can see it here (dedicated issue)

wb54321’s picture

wb54321 CreditAttribution: wb54321 commented

Love pixture, best theme out there! I agree with the tabs comment at the beginning, and a secondary menu which could be customized for each tab. The superfish menu actually accomplishes the same thing, but my audience is not, um, tech-savvy. :)

My biggest concern is content first source ordering: I cannot tell if Pixture is structured for that or not. I am fine with making Drupal do what I want, and creating content in Dreamweaver and hand-editing the resulting code. But dissecting a Drupal theme or coding one from scratch (even with Zen or Basic) is beyond me right now.

Maybe more comments in the code would help? Or would bloat creep in? Maybe duplicate "dummy" copies of commented code (like page.tpl.php.cmnt) could be added?

The ability to control the color of each block in the sidebars would be awesome, but I suspect we're talking serious bloat for that. Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

PR is content source ordered.

More comments makes sense, normally I do leave a lot but for one reason or another (PR was built very quickly) it didnt happen in this theme.

Control over color of the blocks is pretty much impossible due to the way color module works, we could have different shades, but it would be very tricky to get them to look right across all the color schemes.

wb54321’s picture

wb54321 CreditAttribution: wb54321 commented

Thanks for the reassurance about content source order; every bit helps and I understand that is an important SEO piece (that cannot be added in after you finish!).

RE the comments: the code is very orderly, and the main areas are clearly commented. It's not a starter theme after all. I think it should be considered for bundling with D7.

FYI: I have tried out 20 or so themes - 10 of them on suggestions by "gurus" or "best themes" lists. Out of all of them, Pixture is the only one that works right in IE6. The statistics I've seen claim that IE6 makes up 15% to 25% of all browser visits currently. That's a lot of visitors to greet with a broken page.

Thanks for a great theme!

Jeff Burnz’s picture

Jeff Burnz CreditAttribution: Jeff Burnz commented

I take IE6 seriously for that very reason, and in fact its not that hard if you know how to build themes properly. No disrespect to other themers but many did not grow up with IE6. I remember when it first came out, I'd been working in web dev for about a year by then, so I know exactly how to build sites that support it. Unfortunately many today do not and simply give up bothering to understand how it works.

One of my clients has around 40% of visitors using IE6, that will go down over the next year or so but still he would be out of pocket something big time if the site did not support it.

Thanks for the feedback, glad you like my theme!

jackyley’s picture

jackyley CreditAttribution: jackyley commented

Hi Jeff,
I am using Pixture Reloaded for my site, it is nice, thank you
Currently I am working on How to highlight the active (current page) link, I have tried to change CSS code in style.css file, but it seems does not work. Could you give me some hint?

Thank you very much!