My Drupal Blog

Since writing a couple of weeks ago about how I was looking to develop a theme for drupal.org which utilized the color module I’ve had a little time to start designing something, and I’d be interested to hear peoples’ comments, suggestions etc.

The first example uses the default Blue Lagoon color scheme (click for a full sized image).

The second example uses the Mercury color scheme. (Ignore the link color for the minute, I haven’t quite figured this out yet ;).

The design incorporates all the usual bits - logo, site name, tagline, breadcrumb etc. - and I'm thinking of putting the secondary links below the primary links so that they would be associated with the chosen primary link (i.e. if you had two primary links - 'Fruit' and 'Veg' - the secondary links would show up as 'Apples, Bananas, Pears' if 'Fruit' was chosen, and 'Carrots, Peas, Cauliflower' if 'Veg' was chosen) - good idea or bad idea?

Let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Laurence.

So, I decided the other day that it was about time I put my money where my mouth was and got round to releasing a theme on drupal.org. I haven’t contributed a theme to the community yet, and it’s something that I feel is important to do (and do well) – not least of all because I write this blog about Drupal theming!

I’ve always been interested by Garland (Drupal 5’s default core theme) because it allows the user to determine the color scheme. But, having recently had a client who wanted a modification of Garland, I realised that I didn’t actually understand how it worked. I understood that you could change the color scheme, and that when you saved your new color scheme Garland created a new folder with the updated images and CSS, but I didn’t know how it did this, or indeed how to go about creating a theme which utilized the color picker. Having decided to do a new theme, and with an interest in Garland, I thought it would be cool if my new theme could use the color picker as well, so I went looking for some information and came across two good starting places:

• Firstly, there is Steven Wittens’ book page on drupal.org - Integrating with Color.module. Steven is the co-creator of the Garland theme, along with Stefan Nagtegaal, and is also the creator of the Farbtastic color picker which is used in Garland. His write up is a great starting place for anyone interested in the color module.
• Secondly, I found a screencast on the Drupal Dojo website by Dvessel - Color Module Integration. Btw, if you haven’t checked out drupaldojo.com it’s definitely worth taking a little time to do so.

Since then it’s been a case of experimenting in my free time. I’ll keep people posted on my progress over the next little while, and hopefully put up some useful screenshots (and maybe a screencast) about the whole process. I just have to figure it out myself first!