Making themes for ElkArte

Making themes for ElkArte Started by Bloc · May 14, 2013, 07:50:54 pm · Read 23387 times 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. previous topic - next topic

Making themes for ElkArte

May 14, 2013, 07:50:54 pm

..turned out to be a not-so-enjoyable experience....

I have wrestled with making one of my older themes - Coral - into Elkarte format past week, taking the route most theme developers would do I'd expect: going from scratch, slowly building it up by changing the default elkarte theme without looking at past SMF theme code. In one word: time-consuming. I know SMF 2.0 is a beast to adjust to your own, changing lots of styles to get the look you want, but IMHO elkarte is even harder. The styles are more complex now, lots a special effects, like box-shadow and text-shadow(seriously?), making it a lenghty affair just to take those away and still look nice.

I guess i'll get there in the end, just noticed removing some unwanted styles made other areas look crashed..oh well, but IMO any development out from SMF 2 should make the theme-making process easier. You will not have many new and fresh themes by taking this route, that i am quite certain of lol, but one can hope of course. Color variations will be abundant though, as it is with SMF 2.0.

Anyways, just a small(and somewhat negative I'll admit) intial review of elkarte theme making process.

Re: Making themes for ElkArte

Reply #1 – May 14, 2013, 09:14:10 pm

I do believe they have been trying to get someone to help on this side, even just recently... Nobody doing the work on Elk right now seems to be a designer, so I'm sure these things are suffering. Not that my ideas would be of any great help... My time is just to limited to help right now. Can't even finish my stupid mobile theme...

Great to see you though Bloc! I'm sure they'd love any changes you could commit if you saw some things that could really make it easier.

Re: Making themes for ElkArte

Reply #2 – May 15, 2013, 12:57:14 am

Thanks, Brad.

Its good to work with themes again, after a long break.

Well, the best idea would be to simply rewrite/simplify index.css altogether..but I am little unsure how that will be perceived lol. As you may suspect I wouldn't be content with just doing the code then.

Gonna finish Coral first though.

Re: Making themes for ElkArte

Reply #3 – May 15, 2013, 01:35:04 am

Quote from: Bloc – May 14, 2013, 07:50:54 pm..turned out to be a not-so-enjoyable experience....

I have wrestled with making one of my older themes - Coral - into Elkarte format past week, taking the route most theme developers would do I'd expect: going from scratch, slowly building it up by changing the default elkarte theme without looking at past SMF theme code. In one word: time-consuming. I know SMF 2.0 is a beast to adjust to your own, changing lots of styles to get the look you want, but IMHO elkarte is even harder. The styles are more complex now, lots a special effects, like box-shadow and text-shadow(seriously?), making it a lenghty affair just to take those away and still look nice.

Hi Bloc, great to see you

100% agreed. We came almost to the same conclusion and deceided to "drop" the current SMF 2.1 theme (at least the index.css).

The idea is to ship Elk with a very minimalistic theme (it's the current default on this website, credits go to emanuele for removing all the colors

) which should be a good "start" for themers. It'll be free of colors (just white & some grey variants) and free of fancy text effects like text-shadow etc...

index.css will be focused on positions and general layout and will be bundled with some basic color variants (yeah, variants for the default theme).

I've just started and did some initial commits: https://github.com/eurich/Elkarte/commits/default_theme
It's in an early stage, just pushed in the minimalistic index.css from ema's theme, added variants support..

Would be great to get some help and/or ideas how to improve it and make it as simple as possible for the designer.
´

Quote from: IchBinNobody doing the work on Elk right now seems to be a designer..

that's correct for me (can't speek for the others) but someone needs to pick the bull by the horns

Re: Making themes for ElkArte

Reply #4 – May 15, 2013, 08:32:51 am

Well, the css is mostly the same as SMF 2.1 was.
I think Spuds committed some kind of basic cleanup a while ago and that's all.

The problem with different areas broken is probably the same that is present in 2.1: the theme is basically not finished, just few templates were been re-worked (as far as I understood from Ant).

Re: Making themes for ElkArte

Reply #5 – May 15, 2013, 03:03:30 pm

Ah, ok, so its not a finished theme as such. I like the current way Elkarte is going with the core coding, so I def. take a look at the minimalist theme.

IMHO the best way to code the default theme isn't necessarily going for bland or removed colors..but as much use of classes as possible, so a few changes will alter the look severely. Then, by adding id's where you can, you open up for complex themes that build on those classes and target individual parts by their id's instead. I've done some work on my own fork on this(and it will live on further in some form, at least on Github) and its clear for at least, that the less I/any designer has to struggle with targeting things - the more inclined I(they) will be to create new things. Otherwise I'll just be tempted to change the main colors, touch a few styles but leave the rest because its just takes too much time(and perhaps lack of experience/knowledge with themes generally, which is also sad)

I am glad to you taken this stance too, by reducing index.css. I'll gladly add to that work, and see if we can make ElKarte the best thing since ~~sliced bread~~ SMF.

Re: Making themes for ElkArte

Reply #6 – May 15, 2013, 03:07:16 pm

Hopefully some tiny improvements:
https://github.com/eurich/Elkarte/commit/a19c756eeec4713c5cbde152d89e309366fa508f
https://github.com/eurich/Elkarte/commit/7f0b48ab0e3a3d46f2bd6dec498752ccb5295645
Thought it would be good to split these into its own functions:
- readability
- easier to move to a position somewhere else.
- theoretically it could be re-used

Edit: Thanks for your feedback, Bloc. Really appreciated .. Would you please review this:
http://www.elkarte.net/index.php?topic=354.0

Re: Making themes for ElkArte

Reply #7 – May 15, 2013, 05:44:12 pm

Quote from: Bloc – May 15, 2013, 03:03:30 pmAh, ok, so its not a finished theme as such. I like the current way Elkarte is going with the core coding, so I def. take a look at the minimalist theme.

That is basically a color variation with some fancy effects here and there...

Instead, what I'm changing a bit more deeply is minimalist extreme (yeah, find names is not my most prominent skill...

) is changing things a bit more: the first step has been to replace the table in MessageIndex with an unordered list (result, most recent code). This is an experiment, but I think it may be interesting.