Porting Bloxpress?

Skinning and designing Serendipity (CSS, HTML, Smarty)
garvinhicking
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Post by garvinhicking »

Hm, March the 1st is too late for a 1.0 release, I think. Actually the theme "requests" of the past to the open public has never really succeeded, so I fell like if waiting so long for themes that maybe won't come is a real loss in time.

How would you feel about release on February 15th? The contest could be announced as soon as we agree, then people would have time until february 7th to submit their themes and then voting would begin and close on february 15th?

We're not hard in schedules, so if a theme shows up bugs, we can delay it.

1.0 has a few bugfixes and feature improves that I feel like they shouldn't wait for too long :)

Best regards,
Garvin
# Garvin Hicking (s9y Developer)
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carl_galloway
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Post by carl_galloway »

Garvin, that sounds like a good compromise, and I would say that you should make the following mandatory;

1. only very minor changes are to be made to the smarty template files within the default theme folder, and to images in the default theme folder, all previously designed themes that make use of the default smarty files must work flawlessly.

2. the template must work flawlessly with an out of the box installation, including all core plugins that output html (you might want to list them for the benefit of anyone who hasn't heard the expression before)

3. additional styles can be added, and in particular, should improve the way the default theme handles search results, archives, commentpopups, serendipity messages

4. standard html styles such as code, acronym, bold etc should be supported in the stylesheet if the browser default isn't acceptable (in particular the code tag is often reduced in size to become unreadable)

5. all images including media manager images, emoticons, xml buttons, serendipity plug, and just plain images inserted into posts or the sidebar should work as expected - the danger is in assuming the browser will adequately deal with images but often margins and paddings change and if this isn't tested weird results can show up after the theme is released.

6. form elements (input, select, textarea) must not throw out the design if their content is too wide.

Hope this helps, and once again, I really encourage other designers to come up with that winning design. If you have an idea please share it or make a theme.

Carl
judebert
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Post by judebert »

That makes an excellent rule set, in my opinion. I think testing themes will be difficult if we get too many of them, but I also don't think we're expecting a flood.

The 7 is lucky for the Chinese, too (it sounds like "certain"). In fact, it's lucky for pretty much all cultures, according to my research. The four-leaf clover, like the horseshoe, is not regarded as unlucky, but is neutral for cultures other than the Anglo-Saxon derived ones.

Sigh. The restriction on template modification is going to make it tough for me to make rounded corners where I really want them. I'll have to see if I can do something else.
Judebert
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garvinhicking
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Post by garvinhicking »

What would you think of this announcement:

Code: Select all

Hello fellow Serendipity Users!

The time for releasing Serendipity 1.0 is coming close. What we are now in desperate need of, is a pretty and nice looking new default theme to make Serendipity more distinct and pretty, to visually underline the flexibility and large featureset of the Serendipity Blog.

Because of this, we want to have a Serendipity Theme Contest. Designers can submit their designs to us, and we will display them to the public for voting on them. Since Serendipity is an Open Source project without any funding, we cannot offer commercial benefits. But we will of course fully credit your work for display within the Theme, and publically announce the winning theme properly.

We want to schedule the release of Serendipity 1.0 for February 15th. Designers will have time until February 7th, and then the voting starts until February 14th. Once the theme is chosen without dispute, we will include it for the release. If there are any technical problems with the winning design, the release date might get rescheduled, though. Our primary goal is to have a stable and nice Serendipity, so we will bend any scheduling to adjust to that.

Having said this, these are the the "rules":

- The new theme must be unique. It may not be a 1:1 port of existing themes. It must be BSD licensed.

- The new theme should create a visual distinction of Serendipity, but preserve the template association with Serendipity. People who see that theme should not confuse it with themes that are distinct for other blog applications.

- You are free to choose whatever colors are fit. Beware though, that the somewhat etablished colors of Serendipity are blue-greyish.

- The new theme should consist of a Frontend and Backend visual style (or play well with the current default Backend style). Frontend customizations can be done using any technique you like (Smarty, JavaScript, CSS). Backend customizations can only be done via CSS styling (themes/default/admin/style.css).

- Creating a new logo for Serendipity is not yet part of the deal. We are looking for a default theme to be distributed with Serendipity, so it should be a style that people can use on their own blog without giving the impression that it is the official Serendipity Blog.

- The new theme shall pay attention to be accessible and not require JavaScript for important operations. It shall be cross-browser compatible (MSIE, Firefox, Opera, Safari) and validate as XHTML (Transitional at least). The main CSS should also validate; any additional and browser specific CSS codes are not required to be validatable.

- It is suggested to only apply minor changes to the Smarty Template files within the default theme folder. Many Themes depend on the default theme, so it needs to be considered that HTML selectors etc. are only changed in a way that is backwards compatible. Read: Only add new selectors, do not remove existing ones.

- Sidebar Plugins that output HTML (like: Categories, Syndication, Calendar, ...) should still work fine in the new default theme.

- Standard HTML styles such as code, acronym, bold etc should be supported in the stylesheet if the browser default isn't acceptable (in particular the code tag is often reduced in size to become unreadable)

- All images including media manager images, emoticons, xml buttons and just plain images inserted into posts or the sidebar should work as expected - the danger is in assuming the browser will adequately deal with images but often margins and paddings change and if this isn't tested weird results can show up after the theme is released.

We know this are certainly many rules listed, but when reading through them you will find most of them very clear. The Serendipity Project has always well cared about backwards compatibility, integration and valid markup - and so it shall continue in the future.

The future goal of the new default template is to create a unique variation that will be used for the official Serendipity Blog, and to apply a similar theme to the Serendipity Wiki.

But for now: Let the fun begin! Questions will be answered here. Send your final designs in ZIP or TGZ format to Garvin: serendipity{@}supergarv{.}de
# Garvin Hicking (s9y Developer)
# Did I help you? Consider making me happy: http://wishes.garv.in/
# or use my PayPal account "paypal {at} supergarv (dot) de"
# My "other" hobby: http://flickr.garv.in/
carl_galloway
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Post by carl_galloway »

Garvin, I think what you've written is perfectly clear, I just hope my themes are valid css, and I don't have safari so can't test on this, other users might be in the same position.

Also, I've started making some changes to my my themes site, which will form the basis for the theme tester I've mentioned elsewhere. I plan to add quite a few more posts, and then make the sql file and uploads directory available to other testers. I think a live tester demonstrates how well a theme works don't you?

Cheers
Carl
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