Carl02 Progress with colors

Thursday, May 25. 2006

theme configurator for Serendipity
Theme configurator for Carl02
A couple of days ago I showed a preview screenshot of my new template, Carl02, and I asked for opinions. It seems everyone liked the layout but weren't too happy about the number of colors, or wanted to be able to change the colors. It didn't seem like it was going to be possible to please everyone until I started thinking about how the theme configurator works. Basically its just a series of variables that can be called from within the Smarty code. The screenshot you see to the left shows how I've managed to configure colorsets for each major element.

Carl02 with blue options
Carl02 with blue options
The result is that a user can simply choose to have all four colors, or they can choose to be more conservative as the next screenshot shows. The 'About Me' box is still red and I need opinions, should I allow users to enable this or disable this, and should they be able to select a color for this. Personally I would want the 'About Me' box to be unique on page but... thoughts please?
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  1. Matthias said,

    Thursday, May 25. 2006 at 22:00 (Reply)

    See, that's what happens when you play around with stuff - solve one problem, dig up two new problems ;-)

    I still like it, I still like the clean, professional look and I would at all means keep the 'about me' box because I think it is part of that look. I can't help it, somehow this reminds me of the layout templates 'real' CMSs have (now, where did I see something like this? Mambo/Joomla?).

    It's hard to tell from the screenshot, but I suppose the text in the sidebars is purple? Doesn't work for me, I'd make that black. I would probably switch that black in the wrapper or body to red also.

    One last thought (I really wouldn't make any big changes to it, you're 'almost there'): I think the content needs some sparks. Maybe colorize the date and/or the entry titles?

  2. Carl said,

    Thursday, May 25. 2006 at 22:20 (Reply)

    Changing the background color shouldn't be too difficult but I actually want to draw the eye into the main box because the template does already have a lot 'clutter' and I was hoping to reduce the effect of this by going with a darker background that wouldn't stand out or diffuse the overall look.

    The purple text is actually a darker shade of blue, but some of the colors seem more or less intense when the image is scaled, but I might tone it down a bit.

    As for the content needing some spice, not sure what to do there because I wanted to make sure that when the eye is focused on the content that it is framed by the navbar and sidebar. Psychologically this allows the reader to ignore the sidebar content until they need it - how best to explain, you know when TV stations run sports simulcasts and they have the player stats making up about 60% of the screen, and then the actual live play in a box that accounts for the other 40%, and the human eye/brain is able to focus on one or the other but not both so its like having two screens in one - that's what I was trying to achieve with this template.

  3. Matthias said,

    Thursday, May 25. 2006 at 22:34 (Reply)

    I see your point on the background color, but I'm still not sure whether I'd choose black for that. Maybe some kind of grey? I'm sorry, I know not much about 'color usability', but something small in my left ear keeps whispering "brighter, brighter" ;-)

  4. steven said,

    Friday, May 26. 2006 at 00:37 (Reply)

    You are well into the "personal style" area. The code is great.

    Leave it to the user to change the css.

  5. Carl said,

    Friday, May 26. 2006 at 05:57 (Reply)

    Thanks Steven, you raise a good point and its very easy to lose sight of the user's ability to change certain things. My only comments would be that I need the theme to be good enough to motivate a user to download it, and in the case of the 'About Me' box, this is actually a background image with gradient, so if users wanted to change the color of this they would either need the source file or I would need to provide the different options. Experts will just create something from scratch if they like the code but most bloggers are regular folk who have no technical design skills, and I need to provide for at least 90% of their needs before the template is released otherwise I'll spend all my time creating ne graphics.

  6. steven said,

    Friday, May 26. 2006 at 17:23 (Reply)

    of course, you are correct. I often forget how spoiled I have become with an excellent in-house designer.

  7. Abdussamad said,

    Friday, May 26. 2006 at 16:19 (Reply)

    This is very good stuff. But, since you asked for an honest opinion, I have a few suggestions. I like the original idea of placing the two sidebars together but at the same the "balance" of the theme does not seem right. It seems it is too "heavy" on the right side and, at first glance, that takes the attention away from the main content area on the left. Of course you could make a more "traditional" left-content-right layout but then that would take away the originality of the theme. You might consider spicing up the left side or spicing down the right side. Perhaps an option for softer colours on the right. And left padding for the content would ease readability.

    As for the about box, an option to change its colour would be a nice bonus.

  8. Judebert said,

    Friday, May 26. 2006 at 16:38 (Reply)

    W00T! Carl, you rock!

    The configurator is awesome. When I finally get some free time, I'm going to see what I can do about allowing the user to add additional colorsets.

    As for the theme, I like the way the content is obviously separate from the sidebars. I *love* the floating date button.

  9. Carl said,

    Friday, May 26. 2006 at 19:10 (Reply)

    Thanks everyone, and Jude, the floating date button is easy, just open a 75x75 image with a white background in the Gimp, add a white to light grey gradient from top left to bottom right, then in filters use the rounded corners. I think I dropped the radius to about 8 and the offset to 6 but have a play you could easily add this to any template.

  10. Arnaud said,

    Tuesday, June 20. 2006 at 23:49 (Reply)

    Is it a theme especially for serendipity 1.1 ?

  11. Carl said,

    Wednesday, June 21. 2006 at 01:56 (Reply)

    Hi Arnaud, At the moment this template is still very much a work in progress. It is designed specifically for version 1.1, but will be backwards compatible with instructions for older versions. I want this template to be something special, and I still need it to be 2 column and 3 column. Unfortunately I've been very busy with other things and version 1.1 looks like its a couple of months away from reaching a stable version anyway. If you're using 1.1 and would like to try this template let me know.

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