nature theme released

costa · Post by **costa** » Sun Feb 26, 2006 9:32 pm

hello!

after some computer problems which slowed theme developing, i'm ready to go public with this one. it's propably still buggy but slowly i'll try to fix all the problems you (i hope so) will find in the theme. since i'm not very familiar with css and i'm doing it just for fun (although i'm trying to do my best) - don't be cruel with me and the theme. if you like it - use it. if you don't like it - please tell me what's wrong. if you find any bugs (like some plugins messing up with their specific styles), please pm me or mail me. i'll try to fix it as soon as possible. i just don't have time to test it with all plugins possible.

feel free to download the theme from my page.

thanks for your time. it is a pleasure to do something for serendipity's community.

regards, CoSTa

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 12:57 am

I think I speak for the entire community when I thank you for contributing this excellent theme. Despite your misgivings you've produced a theme that I know will prove very popular - Well Done!

d_cee · Post by **d_cee** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 9:58 am

Hi Costa

well done! great effort for your first theme - the first of many I hope. I noticed one or two problems with the theme on Carl's site but nothing serious.

Dave Cummins

Post by **garvinhicking** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 2:50 pm

I also like that theme a lot!

Would you like me to add your theme to our Spartacus repository? If you know CVS, I could give you CVS access so that you can maintain your theme in the future; else I can of course always commit patches, if you like.

Great work,
Garvin

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 5:13 pm

My themes site has now been updated if anyone wants to see the Nature theme working

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:00 pm

dave: if you'll be so kind to tell aexactly where the problems exists, i'll try to fix them. damn, i should really read something about css

. thanks in advance!

garvin: if you think it's worthy uploading into cvs - please, upload it. i'm not very familiar with all that cvs and coding stuff so propably i'll break something. i'll be very proud to see this theme in cvs repository. btw - the site about spartacus... useful! and another btw garvin: i'm into translating serendipity to polish. are there among developers or people supporting serendipity some guys from poland?

carl: thanks man! don't be surprised of another dozens of questions. time now play a little with smarty

d_cee · Post by **d_cee** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:29 pm

Anonymous wrote:dave: if you'll be so kind to tell aexactly where the problems exists, i'll try to fix them. damn, i should really read something about css . thanks in advance!

Hi Costa
the theme looks great in Firefox on my mac but on Safari the width of the content and sidebar areas expands and throws the header and footer images out - it's less obvious in the the footer. Ive posted a screenshot here of the header part http://themes.daves.me.uk/pictures/nature.jpg

Apart from that - nothing!

look forward to the next one

Dave

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Mon Feb 27, 2006 10:40 pm

CosTa, if you want to do some Polish translations, please take a look at my theming tutorials. Currently we are going through and translating all into German and Russian. I have about half a dozen Polish visitors and I know that Garvin has noticed a growing number of new Serendipity installations from Eastern Europe so your contribution would be very very useful.

Thanks,

Carl

Post by **garvinhicking** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 2:20 pm

Costa, just like Carl mentioned - we definitely could need translation help! There are no polish people I am personally in contact with, sadly.

I've also committed your theme to CVS, many thanks!! If you ever have some updates or patches to it, please let me know so that I can update the CVS as well.

Many Thanks,
Garvin

costa · Post by **costa** » Tue Feb 28, 2006 5:29 pm

d_cee: yeah, propably problem with overflow. now i just don't know how to eliminate this problem. overflow works under firefox, opera and even ie (with some problems of course - it's ie after all

). but under safari??? damn, really need to dig the net for some safari specific sources. thanks!

carl, garvin: there will be a polish version of serendipity

. since i'm very busy now i can not translate the whole thing before 1.0 release. sorry :/

Post by **Don Chambers** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:39 am

CoSTa - I loved that theme when I first saw it - looks like you have tweaked it a bit. This theme is fantastic - clean & professional!

You helped me a lot with my issues, and remember, I didn't even know what CSS was a few weeks ago. I'm still changing little things in my own here and there.

Not sure if Carl started this, or you, but placing comments below a style is, IMHO, confusing.... I always expect those thing above the style. I realize this is a petty issue, but thought I would mention it to you, and Carl, at the same time. Maybe this is a USA thing.... sorry - do not mean to offend if that is the case.

I like the comment "added styles".... again, not sure if that is you, Carl, or both, but it draws attention to the fact that these elements have been added.

I didn't dig deep, but I noticed the Google block is a brighter white than everything else in the sidebar.

costa · Post by **costa** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:03 pm

hello owen!

Owen Stubbs wrote:Not sure if Carl started this, or you, but placing comments below a style is, IMHO, confusing.... I always expect those thing above the style. I realize this is a petty issue, but thought I would mention it to you, and Carl, at the same time. Maybe this is a USA thing.... sorry - do not mean to offend if that is the case.

come on, no offence felt

. ok, i'm not quite sure i'm following you. what do you mean by "placing comments below a style is confusing"? sorry, my english sucks :/... i'm quesing i'ts about comments in style.css. carl made some comments to the default stylesheet which actually helps A LOT playing with css styles. it was his idea and his hard work. i put comments into the file mainly for my own purposes. i'm a lazy person so it is just a matter of my convenience, nothing more

. after some days or weeks fine-tuning css styles without a clear explanation what i have used for what would be a pain.

again - "added styles" was just for my information (and maybe someone elses, like yours for expample

) that some styles are not implementet into default styles.css file. since they're not vital and mainly are offered by varius plugins, i thought it would be clear for any reader to just split them from other styles. as you see - it works

. ok, i'll somehow make the file more clear and more readable since it would may come in handy for someone else making his own template.

about google problem: i do not notice any. the nugget looks the same as all other plugins in my firefox. and it should look the same. there is no other style for html nugget. you made me curious what the hell could it be

regards
CoSTa

Post by **Don Chambers** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:55 pm

What I meant CoSTa, is that your style descriptions come AFTER the style elements, such as this:

Code: Select all

#serendipity_banner {
	margin-left: 10px;
	margin-right: 10px;
}

/* Describe: container for banner */

IMHO, the descriptions are less confusing if they were placed BEFORE the elements, especially for some of the lengthy ones.

Regardless of where they are placed, I am really glad Carl started providing those descriptions, and am happy to see you following the trend.

I also like that you list the "added styles" last, and specifically reference them as "added". It really draws attention to the fact that those styles are NOT standard. I should do the same with my own. Who knows, maybe I will take the one I did for my boat event page, and make it more general in nature and turn it into a theme for the library. That would probably take some time though - like yours, mine is a fixed width. First thing I would probably do is increase the width of the sidebar. I found that the width I am using of 150 px is a little too tight. 170 (like yours) or 180 would probably be about right.

Regarding the Google box, that just seems to be a function of your background gradient (main-gradient.png). On my monitor, that gradient is not yet completely white by the time it gets to the left edge of the Google box. Since the google component has a white background, I can see the difference on my monitor.

By the way - since I am new to this - is your MainPane width set by to its width by using a 750px background image, then the style width=100%, thereby picking up the width of the background image?

carl_galloway · Post by **carl_galloway** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 6:50 pm

Hi guys,

I started commenting stylesheets way back, I think it must have been after 'Connections' in response to another user wanting better documentation. Since then I've been watching very closely the comments in these forums and on users blogs about documentation for Serendipity. One thing I've noticed is css syntax just isn't very well understood by many users, and even the commenting that I've been putting into my stylesheets isn't enough. I mean its ok to write 'container style for comments', or 'style for entire page', but the problem is that I'm still getting jut as many emails from users wanting help than I ever was before. This has made me realise that I will probably need to comment every single line of the stylesheet - and that is a mammoth task - and also increases the size of the stylesheet so much that it would have a performance impact on Serendipity. So, I'm thinking with my next theme I might actually produce two stylesheets, one fully commented, and the other with no comments.

With the sidebar width, I personally think 150 looks awesome, I love themes that find way of maximising screen real estate, but like Don, I quickly found it tends to squash some plugins and make them uncomfortable on the eyes. This is why in Andreas08 I've actually taken the login and quicksearch right out of the sidebar altogether and placed them in the header. I also have a link to s9y.org in the footer, which means users of this theme would never need to worry about positioning the following three plugins in the sidebar; powered by, link to admin suite, and quicksearch. Even though they are individually small, most users have all three and this takes up quite a bit of real estate which is why three column themes work so much better with Serendipity, but take them out of the flow and suddenly two column themes start looking a lot better.

costa · Post by **costa** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 7:49 pm

owen
now i can see it. your monitor must be bright enough

. yes, it comes from google's background table. here comes the definition:

Code: Select all

<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/custom" target="_top">
<table bgcolor="#ffffff">

and here we have the white background. and yes, since we have a gradient background for all the content, including sidebar - here comes the difference. i love gradients but they're pretty hard to play with. i had a lot of fun trying different colours for comments on my page (carl's test page has those damned popups, i have to style popups also).

about mainpane now: the basic sizes are in index.tpl file. since it is a fixed width theme i don't want its width to be defined by css. so the basics are in index.tpl. mainpane is set to 100% simply "in case of something". it does not really matter i think but it won't harm either. my next theme i'm working on now will be all css based and without tables at all. that includes complete rewriting of plugin_calendar.tpl and some other tpl files. a good exercise in css styling

carl
your idea about two files is good! i like it very much. althought i think the better solution is to make a good documentation of styles used by serendipity and plugins and make it public on serendipity's site. i know, a hell of work but hey, we have wiki, we can edit it all the way we want

. i feel somehow lost with classes introduced by plugins. it's good that plugins have their own classes, that gives more possibillities. but it is also a pain to style them without a good documentation. so, what you say, is it worthy to start making it? another problem i see: some plugins don't have their styles and that's a real problem. maybe makers should upgrade thier plugins and give some freedom to theme makers? i'll check on my local server some plugins and give a clear (i hope

) explanation what i mean by that.

daaamn, i really must start learn english