D7UX and Garland don't match. Could we add a prototyping theme to head? [#474168]

Work from D7UX project is starting to show up in the issue queue. (tag)

What I see happening is that Garland is not the ideal place to work in, for example see: #472126: D7UX: Move buttons to right area, add content and meta selector

I propose to add a new theme to core, (maybe just a clone of Stark?) that allows us to quickly iterate on actual design issues. A theme to prototype in. No garantuees it stays in, but a place to experiment and learn in so that we may find and document our design best practices on the go instead of after code freeze.

- Agreed this would be useful Y/N?
- What would be the basic requirements for this theme? As empty as Stark is or already dressed up a little more?
- …?

This issue doesn't need the actual patch for now, I just want to hear your thoughts on this first. Thanks.

Comments

Comment #1

eigentor commented 27 May 2009 at 12:37

It is a dirty Job, but someones gotta do it...

Well if somebody adds some very basic styling to stark (so at least the links are not pink and blue and underlined) thumbs up from me.

Does it make sense to keep Start as stripped as possible so not to style and re-style?

Comment #2

yoroy commented 27 May 2009 at 12:42

We shouldn't use Stark itself for this. Just wondering if something like Stark would be the best place to start. Stark serves it's own purpose well and should be left as is.

Comment #3

leisareichelt commented 27 May 2009 at 13:15

I think this would be v useful. We need to retrofit D7UX usability to Garland but it would be much nicer to do just that - retrofit it - rather than having to develop in it now - it makes good ideas look v ugly sometimes!

Comment #4

catch

he/him

English

commented 27 May 2009 at 13:22

I think a subtheme of stark which just adds some niceties would be a good start - needs to be in core so we've got a central reference point for screenshots etc. If it's only slightly less minimal than Stark then it'll also help us avoid things like #435646: Vertical Tab summaries are not distinguishable (in Stark).

Comment #5

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 27 May 2009 at 13:56

I think this makes a lot of sense.

-193890283434 to adding more stuff to Stark, though. Stark is there to be stark naked and that's it. :) But I'm cool with this theme as a sub-theme, although just so you know, the column layout CSS is deliberately non-robust in order to make it as small as possible. It might be better to just start from scratch using Drupal core's built-in .tpl.php files as a base (and if there's something you can't do w/ CSS and that markup, patches!!)

Comment #6

johnalbin

they/他

English

Taipei, Taiwan

commented 27 May 2009 at 14:34

yeah, Stark should remain as is for now.

And there's no point to of making a new theme a sub-theme of Stark since its all-core anyway. But I don't quite understand what issues this solves over just committing to core stylesheets. Going to talk to yoroy in IRC…

Comment #7

yoroy commented 27 May 2009 at 14:43

From IRC, with permission:
__

JohnAlbin: Why do we need a new theme for D7ux work? Can't that CSS be added to the core stylesheets?

yoroy: good point. but that would mean direct patches to core instead of having a theme to play around with. (I know the theme is technically 'core' as well :)
I'd like a bit more freedom to try things out instead of bikeshedding around direct core patches

JohnAlbin: what about a temporary d7ux.css file in system module? And when things are finalized a bit, we could split it up into properly-named stylesheets?

yoroy: what if we'd like to add an icon or background image then?

JohnAlbin: ah, well then. yeah, you'd be sol. ;-)
Still, you are going to end up with the same issues when using Garland as your prototyping theme.
Would a contrib theme help with the d7ux work?

yoroy: why the same as using Garland? Garland gets in the way, I think clean slate would work better
(also, I'll probably have to postpone it on http://drupal.org/node/473080)

JohnAlbin: well, if you are prototyping stuff and its not quite core-worthy. A contrib theme actually might be the right route. Then you could have several maintainers and not have to get everything past Dries or webchick.

yoroy: yes, that is certainly the contrib advantage
But that makes testing patches / screenshots in that theme much more cumbersome
Contrib is a better fit for proof-of-concept style work. But wouldn't it be great if we could mess around directly in core a bit?

JohnAlbin: on the "why the same as using Garland" question, I meant that if you think of Drupal as the base, BASE theme for everything, then writing styles to a new theme will mean that other themes like Stark and Garland aren't inheriting that work.
i.e. the un-styled d7ux elements might be uber-ugly or, worse, unusable.

yoroy: hmmm, true

JohnAlbin: also, we'd still have to pass all work through the core committers. Which means we would need buy-in to effectively have proto/temp work in core.

yoroy:so, not as flexible as I originally thought :)

JohnAlbin: So would the core committers lower their standards to allow proto work in core? But only for D7ux issues?

yoroy: JohnAlbin: heh, that does sound messy eh?

JohnAlbin: a bit. But at least we're discussing options. :-)

Comment #8

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 27 May 2009 at 14:59

Given that discussion, a contrib theme probably makes the most sense for this. You could then give as many people commit access as you need, and clip along as quickly as possible. We can then do one gigantic "make it core worthy" pass later on when it's closer to being ready.

My big concern with that, however, is leaving out the 800+ people browsing the "Drupal" queue. I guess just make it a point to make the work in the theme queue ONLY CSS/JS/image stuff if you can, and cross-post to it on any Drupal issues that are relevant.

Comment #9

johnalbin

they/他

English

Taipei, Taiwan

commented 27 May 2009 at 15:24

What about leaving the issues in Drupal core's queue? Specifically the "d7ux" tag queue.

And when its "RTBC", someone can:

commit it to the contrib theme
explicitly say it was "committed to contrib pending final d7ux work"
mark the issue CNW.
And then just re-visit each time that issue needs tweaking in contrib and/or when its finally ready to be put into core.

That would keep the 800 eyeballs. Thoughts?

Comment #10

webchick

she/they

English

Vancouver 🇨🇦

commented 27 May 2009 at 15:39

Sounds good! Let's do a "d7ux theme" tag as well to separate it from other d7ux work, and so we can use that to tag other, more fundamental underlying theme system issues that would help move the theme along.

If we go with a single core issue for "work in progress", we're probably going to want to make a separate issue for "ok, seriously, commit this stuff to core now" as I anticipate there being about 300 replies, but that is a long way away and we can cross that when we get to it. :)

Go nuts!

Comment #11

eclipsegc commented 27 May 2009 at 15:49

Yeah, going to have to whole-heartedly agree with Webchick here, contrib absolutely seems the right approach. That being said, we're back to "stark", and I think there are issues here, as the tpl upgrades have not been pushed through the way they should have been (my fault). If a contrib theme attempted to utilize the existing default tpl files, it's really not much better than utilizing an unthemed garland (with the exception of the page.tpl). In fact, code wise, it's worse in some aspects.

So, stark is intended to be a bikeshed event... I'm not seeing that change any time soon, and D7ux needs to be agile, and not get bogged down in the nitty gritty of the code being used. That's kind of at odds with the potential js needs of the whole D7ux project though, so... it's like chicken egg. We need this to be quick and easy to work with, but making it core (and thus stark) worthy will probably require rewriting the html at the end of the day, which will probably require rewriting the js/css at the end of the day so it's like we get to do the whole project twice... :-(

If you're "OK" with that, then... I say get a contrib theme going, if not... you have to get bogged down in the bikeshed that is stark, and I don't think D7ux can sustain that and still meet it's own objectives.

Eclipse

Comment #12

johnalbin

they/他

English

Taipei, Taiwan

commented 27 May 2009 at 17:10

Issue tags:

+D7UX theme

@webchick

Just so that I understand properly… so since this is an issue about the theme and not about the d7ux work itself, this issue would get the “d7ux theme” tag?