New Drupal 6 Theme Nearing Release

Been working on the new drupal 6 design for this blog. Its taken longer than normal, because i'll be adding it to drupal's contributions. Haven't named it yet. Probably will go with something along the lines of "green nerd hippy", but am still not sure.

The theme aims to be a slick, two column layout, that is flexible enough to be used as a base theme.
The priorities in the theme are:

  1. Easy to use as a base theme: This means minimal code, except when using minimal code would make it more difficult to comprehend.
  2. Steering clear of crazy/expert css/js techniques.
  3. A contemporary grungy green design.
  4. To not look like a drupal theme.
  5. Focused for use by blogs, and small publications. Flexibility is sacrificed in some areas (for example, keeping the page width down for good readability on all screens.)
  6. a heretical attitude towards certain "drupalisms". For example, local tasks appear at the very top of the page, instead of in the middle of content.

Not a priority:

  1. 3 column support -- 3 columns is almost always too much junk to put on a webpage anyways.
  2. Obsessively avoiding "presentational markup". This goes back to keeping code easy to understand rather than obsessing on "semantic markup". Using containers, and wrappers isn't going to hurt anyone, after all.
  3. Being an appropriate starting theme for sites other than simple publications and blogs. It may be a good one, but its not designed for dynamic columns.