[2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don]

Mark threads with "[2.0]" for discussions about features in the longer-term future, "[1.6]" is for short-term. This is not the place for general discussions or plugin or template requests. Only features that are approved to happen by the core team should be listed here for better structuring.
yellowled
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[2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don]

Post by yellowled »

This is probably too much work for 1.6 or even 1.7, but at some point between now and 2.0, sooner rather than later :wink:, I'd like to see a new, modern default frontend template. And by default, I mean default as in "Serendipity 2.3".

I know branding is kind of important, but Serendipity 2.3 dates back to 2004. The guy who designed it is no longer with the project, as far as I now, he's not even using S9y any longer himself. default also still uses layout tables, the CSS is very inefficient, lots of classed are obsolete, it's simply a mess, probably because it has never been updated. Then again, with the new child/engine theme concept, we might not need to replace it as much as override it by a more up-to-date engine theme.

However, this new default should not only replaced /templates/default as the fallback template, it should also replace Bulletproof as the standard template.

I know Bulletproof is very popular with inexperienced users, but it is outdated and very hard to update to current standards (technically as well as in terms of design) because of it's complexity. I know we're short on template designers, but I'm sure Don and/or me can do better than the current standard theme.

YL
Don Chambers
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev: Matthias & Don

Post by Don Chambers »

Well, I just assigned this to you and me buddy! Misery loves company!!! :lol:

Skype me or something and we can begin to discuss
=Don=
yellowled
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev: Matthias & Don

Post by yellowled »

Don Chambers wrote:Well, I just assigned this to you and me buddy! Misery loves company!!! :lol:
Yay! Another project with the crazy dude from Chicago! :mrgreen:
Don Chambers wrote:Skype me or something and we can begin to discuss
Can't skype right now since I'm at my girlfriend's and don't have a headset with me. Some thought's on this, though:

- we should think about using a third party framework this time to save us some hassle; I'm voting for 960.gs since it's stable and has a fixed and a fluid version which could be chosen using a theme option

- no support for IE<7 this time :)

- no excessive use of theme options this time, we need to keep it tidy; this will also hopefully keep the code maintainable

YL
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by Don Chambers »

Sounds good so far. I have never used 960.gs, but I know you have. There are others out there as well. You sure 960 is the best choice? .. not doubting you, just questioning. Also think we may want some navigation, perhaps suckerfish style or something with jquery... I think that is a much liked feature in bulletproof.

Wait a sec... we have navigation in the core now, correct? (its been awhile since I have gotten my head out of Kinetic)...

Enjoy the visit with your girlfriend! Repeatedly!!! :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:
=Don=
yellowled
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by yellowled »

Don Chambers wrote:You sure 960 is the best choice?
For a solid template to be used (hopefully!) by a wide number of users? Yes. As I said, it has been around for some time now, is being used by a lot of sites and projects (as a matter of fact, many other systems use it for their default theme), fixes the most common browser issues by default, and gives us a nice, well-rounded layout foundation to build upon.
Don Chambers wrote:Wait a sec... we have navigation in the core now, correct?
Yes. Works pretty much the same as the nav in BP, saves some stuff in the config.inc.php, and works across all templates using it (meaning you don't have to input the nav links from scratch if you switch between templates using the core nav). Not sure it supports nested, suckerfish-style navs, though. (As you know, I'm not a big fan of suckerfish menus anyway. :wink:)

YL
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Re: [2.0] The s9y history of templating

Post by Timbalu »

Sorry to disturb this private dialogue. ;-)

I already posted this in the http://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=17381 thread some days ago, but maybe it was just skipped.
Don Chambers wrote:I'm going to go with a slightly different approach. You seem to be using the template serendipity 3.0. That template is in the folder /templates/carl_contest/.
As you are saying this, Don, I remembered carl_contest being serendipity 3.0, which is quite confusing.

If one is new to serendipity he/she/it ( ;-) ) doesn't know about the S9y history of templating, like the evolution default -> serendpity 2.0 -> carl_contest -> bulletproof. This is why people use serendipity 2.0 even in this days.

There are a lot of users out there not knowing all these things.
:arrow: So I really do think it is worth to rename (or make a copy S2, S3, S4) these templates to simplest reveal their purpose on first sight.

What do you think about that?

Ian
yellowled
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Re: [2.0] The s9y history of templating

Post by yellowled »

Timbalu wrote:If one is new to serendipity he/she/it ( ;-) ) doesn't know about the S9y history of templating, like the evolution default -> serendpity 2.0 -> carl_contest -> bulletproof. This is why people use serendipity 2.0 even in this days.
As far as I can remember (v0.6), there never was a S9y 2.0. The one by Tom Sommer (default) is actually called "Serendipity 2.3". :)

I agree that this used to be an issue, but unfortunately, the whole area is confusing in S9y. Just think of the whole themes/styles/templates ambiguity or the whole default vs standard template thing (BP right now is the standard template, but not the default).

As far as I ever understood the whole template logic, there has to be a directory /templates/default/ for the template fallback mechanism (which is a good thing!) to work. In my humble opinion, a new default template in, say, S9y v2.0 should replace the old default, especially since we also want to have a new backend template and will probably want to replace a lot of the JS stuff which is in there now with jQuery.

I think the name of that template (not the name of the directory, but the one set in info.txt) doesn't really matter then. Actually, in my opinion, this is the true reason for people having difficulties with the template system: a template being called "Serendipity 3.0" living in a directory called "contest". This is something template designers should avoid if possible.

YL
Timbalu
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Re: [2.0] The s9y history of templating

Post by Timbalu »

yellowled wrote:As far as I can remember (v0.6), there never was a S9y 2.0. The one by Tom Sommer (default) is actually called "Serendipity 2.3". :)
Yes, true, thats the one I meant!
So I correct my vote to:
Timbalu wrote:If one is new to serendipity he/she/it ( ;-) ) doesn't know about the S9y history of templating, like the evolution default -> serendpity 2.3 -> carl_contest -> bulletproof. This is why people use serendipity 2.3 even in this days.
yellowled wrote:As far as I ever understood the whole template logic, there has to be a directory /templates/default/ for the template fallback mechanism (which is a good thing!) to work. In my humble opinion, a new default template in, say, S9y v2.0 should replace the old default, ....
Good idea to follow into http://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=17419. Please push it forward!

Ian
yellowled
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by yellowled »

Okay, so it is done. Well, almost. :)

Since Don has been kind of m.i.a., I have started to develop a new default frontend template called 2k11 (little side blow to those WP fellas there, but also to pressure myself into finishing this in the near future).

Some disclaimers before we start debating it:

* Philosophy: 2k11 is meant to be a default template for fresh s9y installations, but also a starting point for new templates to be built upon it. That's why it doesn't and will never have as many theme options as Bulletproof. If somebody wants to take this and add all those nifty features BP has, fine. But the base template will only have a few options. Ever.

* Looks: It is really hard to design something everbody likes, so I went with "plain and simple". Yes, it does resemble the WP default theme(s). It also does not resemble past s9y default themes very much, but it does honor the s9y corporate design. (At least I hope so.) So don't expect anything too fancy here, that's just not the point.

* Technical: It's HTML5 (based on v2 of the HTML5 Boilerplate), it's responsive (i.e. it adapts to the user's viewport; yes, even down to smartphone screens). It uses Modernizr 2 to enable new HTML5 elements, therefore it will break in old IEs with JS disabled. Big whup. It does use some CSS3 features, but with a sensible fallback for older browsers not supporting those. It should also be rather accessible because of the use of a CSS-only layout, wai-aria landmark roles and proper form markup. As of now, it is also completely untested for browser compatibility in any version of IE. (Will do that later.)

* s9y compatibility & features: It will require at least s9y v1.6, I guess. Basically because it uses the new built-in navigation. As of now, it has support (i.e. templates and styles) for the basic and commonly used core plugins, plus for some popular non-core plugins (freetag, static pages etc.).

* State of development: I guess about 95%. It does have some issues which need to be addressed, some of them might even require changes to the core, most of them related to switching to HTML5 markup. The code is on GitHub, I intend to keep it there. I figure it will be better to develop it there and include snapshots in the s9y core. Contributions are welcome on GitHub. (But please have some patience, I'm still learning how to use git myself. I also did not include a GitHub url because of the url limit in the forum.)

More theme options/features:

* flexible layout, up to two sidebars; sidebars are created according to the positioning of sidebar plugins in the backend, i.e. by moving a plugin to a sidebar

* theme options:
- setting the date format (globally)
- including a banner img from the s9y media db (responsive img, not displayed on small screens)
- using a font from the Google webfonts directory (yes, it does have a proper fallback and an option to not use webfonts at all for the Google skeptics); choose one of 5 fonts pre-selected by me

That's it. No feature creep, remember? I also probably forgot to mention something.

Okay, so now you guys probably want to see some screenshots, right? These were taken in Google Chrome in 1280px width (unless indicated otherwise) using the Droid Sans webfont and a banner img. Here you go:

* start page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/691134/2k11/start.png

* single entry w/ comments: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/691134/2k11/entry.png

* standard contact form: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/691134/2k11/contact.png

* static page: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/691134/2k11/page.png

(More screenshots and info in follow-up post.)
yellowled
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by yellowled »

Okay, so more screenshots:

* entry archives: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/691134/2k11/archives.png

* entry summary: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/691134/2k11/summary.png

* small screens (640px): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/691134/2k11/small.png

* mobile (smartphone portrait mode emulated in Chrome): http://dl.dropbox.com/u/691134/2k11/mobile.png

Anything is up for debate, but so far, I'm pretty happy with it.

Questions, suggestions?

EDIT: Oh, I forgot: Yes, I will probably set up a public demo blog for this at some point to test it properly.

YL
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by yellowled »

Timbalu
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by Timbalu »

Suprise, surprise! :D

I like it ++!!!

As mine, which is'nt meant to be a default theme, and not even sure about getting released ever, is using new_default as fallback, how did you solve this in 2k11?

Just a quick note about the serendipity logo... I used the s9y.org dial img with transparent background, which I would like to be the default logo. I would even like to place the 3 princes of serendip searching serendipity like on it... ;-) ...but still have to find someone designing them nicely.

Is there any default use of jquery?
Regards,
Ian

Serendipity Styx Edition and additional_plugins @ https://ophian.github.io/ @ https://github.com/ophian
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by garvinhicking »

Hi!

Just browsed through it quickly. I really like it! Great work!

Regards,
Garvin
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yellowled
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by yellowled »

Phew. Glad you guys like it, I was really nervous about this. :)
Timbalu wrote:using new_default as fallback, how did you solve this in 2k11?
Not at all. Yet.

The question is how to do this in a sensible way considering backwards compatibility and future changes in s9y which might lead to dropping backwards compatibility in some areas. It could work as a replacement for /templates/default, it could work as a child theme with /templates/default as an engine template. My opinion is that we should replace default at some point, but it's really up for discussion.
Timbalu wrote:Just a quick note about the serendipity logo...
Personally, I don't like the "dialer type" logo at all. It reminds me of … well, only Germans will know what I mean if I say "Prilblume" :wink: So I'm not exactly a fan of including it here.
Timbalu wrote:Is there any default use of jquery?
Not yet. I want to replace any inline JS with jQuery, but I haven't gotten around to it. I'm not really keen on implementing any fancy jQuery stuff just for the sake of using it, but I will probably use it for some "under the hood" stuff.

YL
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Re: [2.0] New default frontend template [dev:Yellowled & Don

Post by yellowled »

Just to catch you guys up: I also posted the screenshots on G+ this evening (to a circle of s9y users). Seems like this is going in the right direction – +6 as of now, some people even offered to test the template now (which I didn't recommend). Also, Kris is pretty determined to use it on his blog once it's finished, which would be awesome given his reach in the German blogosphere.

I'm going to need some "real coding" help to finish this. I'll try to write down a "wishlist" over the next couple of days, depends on my workload elsewhere.

YL
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