Theme development

Hi guys,

As a follow on from a discussion that started pretty much on Jeff Eatons Blog and his musings On the complexity of Drupal theming here is an idea I have been thinking about for a while that might be of value to Drupal.org. Feedback, flames and ideas welcome.

The Theory

In a nutshell, Jeff has identified the complexity of Drupal theming and the fact that most Drupal themes on other sites are 100% site-specific as a reason why there are so few contributed themes on Drupal.org. Good point. But, I tend to disagree...the same could be said for modules, but, judging by the amount of modules contributed..it doesn't seem to be the case.

Modules start life as a 100% site-specific "template" of functionality and contributing a module is 1000 X times more difficult than contributing a theme.

Similarly, some would argue that Drupal (php) snippets start life as 100% site-specific entities, yet since I started the Sliced Bread PHP Snippets handbook section....it has exploded.

Hi,

I'm very new to Drupal and would like to navigate my vocabularies in a way similar to how Yahoo organises its directory.

For example, in http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/, Computers_and_Internet would be a term and the "additional categories"; "Communications and Networking", "Computer Generated Art"... would be the terms under "Computers_and_Internet".

Is there anything that can do this? I've tried the taxonomy_menu module but that doesn't quite do what I'm after.

I'm using the Spread Firefox theme and I've noticed that the main content apears at the end of the page.tpl.php and therefor in the html source. Not the best solution if you want to be searchengine friendly. But at the top of BODY there is an A HREF "#content". Is this only for accessibilty or has this also an impact on SEO?

Im working on a complete minimal redesign of the Administration interface.
see a link to new design here http://www.s-o-u-r-c-e.info/drupal_admin.gif
Ive been evaluating many potential directions as far as function and display and have decided to use FLASH to build my backend interface to drupal.
this is a link to an organazational structure i started to help me work through the mess of links represented in the admin area.
http://www.s-o-u-r-c-e.info/admin_map1.gif
This is a work in progress and I hope to find some collaborators who would be interested in a complete rework of the admin area. Maybe you want a simpler interface for your client, or just for yourself....

So Im wondering....
1. Has anyone else used flash with drupal and have any suggestions or contributions?
2. Is anyone working on a "real" template system that separates php from the design process? I want to separate the admin section permanently and i would like to be able to easily create and apply different templates to separate sections in large websites. I have looked into phpTemplate but am not happy with the complexity and know for certain that it would not be suitable for the majority of my clients.
3. Can we form a design/programming team to address these issues as a major contribution to the Drupal Sourcecode?

Initially, Id like to start a discussion to address usability issues and possible solutions. I want to propose and support a "best of breed" mentality when it comes to technological solutions. There's so many ways to do the same thing.... Lets discover the ways to make user experience with drupal an engaging tool that stands out from the pack!

I'm having a linking problem with the phptemplate theme I've developed. The public site works fine for anonymous users, but when authenticated users log-in, the links in the admin section go haywire.

For example, suppose I log-in and go to administer >> themes:
www.site.com/drupal-install/admin/themes

Hi "themers"

Is it possible to identify the current "page" somehow in the page.tpl.php?
The objective is to create separated template "pages" where it will be putted different HTML, and also associate different CSS ids.

Thanks in advance,
Fernando Silva