Theme development

Hello everyone!

So I'm taking over a poorly coded site (not a pro myself), and trying to understand the slow performance.
One fundamental thing I discovered (using XHProf) is that the Views module takes a certain amount of CPU Time (Inc.) regardless of the current page, be it the front page (5 views) or a node page (usually no views).

Hello,

I am creating a theme and I was wondering if I do need to create a template.php file?

Also, I am creating a theme for the first time and I would like to know what order I should create the drupal files. I know .info should be the first file.. but what should I create next?

How does Omega4.x theme load device specific CSS. For example for Tablet it could load only tablet.css not mobile.css.
What is the logic behind it. I definetely know it is not at client side

Hey guys,

as I am building a website with NivoSlider and using Imagefield for some of the picture uploads, I am wondering if it's possible to use the crop feature on uploads for NivoSlider too? If so, how can I manage that? Would be nice to manage the picture size that way instead of having Nivo cropping the picture.

Thanks in advance.

Hi there. Been struggling with this a couple of days! I need to create a menu with this HTML structure:

I'm just trying to create a new theme using the Zen theme as my starting point.. after installing Zen (latest version) and creating/renaming and installing my sub-theme for my starting point, I am ready now ready to start themeing...

But what are the files, css or php or other, that hold the default block region values for my new zen sub theme? so I can open them with an editor and study them, and to change or add my own block regions?