[Plone-com] We need a new modern theme for plone.com.

Wed Sep 5 05:33:19 UTC 2012

Hi Wyn,

Thanks for your feedback.

I won't have read through all the email until I get some time tonight, 
so I only have a patchy understanding of "stage two", TV1 etc.

But at a high level my thoughts are almost exactly the opposite of what 
you've outlined.

Basically with plonetheme.unified, all of the hard work has been done 
and it can deliver value to the project *now* (rather than overspeccing 
and overcooking everything as we've done in the past... only to lose 
momentum & focus).

This would serve as the basis for the plonetheme design, and we could 
get TV1 to add "flashy things" later (i.e. a plone visual design layer), 
but using a solid technical foundation, and once we have the content 
defined which IMO should drive customisation of the design. It also 
won't holdup creation of content.

I think the overall design should be driven by content, requirements and 
a clear direction rather than vice-versa.

The visual design of plonetheme.unified is good insofar as its "not 
another bootstrap site", but it strives to better reflect the identity 
of Plone. But its by no means meant to supplant a formal design process 
(there is no brief yet!), and from the sounds of it TV1 could take the 
brief, requirements and content etc... and build something great for 
plone.com.

As it stands, plonetheme.unified has all the the underpinnings for a 
modern, responsive grid based layout (with sane RTL semantics even) and 
cleans up quite a bit of legacy accumulated cruft thats gathered over 
the years. So the formal design process could focus squarely design, 
rather than UI and library integration into plone.

I'm not fussed either way - my main focus is to see an excellent outcome 
for plone.com, as it deserves a good online presence at last!

Also I forgot to say that I'm able to contribute some solid blocks of 
time over the next few weekends if anyone is interested in progressing this.

Cheers

--
Julian Coyne
Unified Systems
    T:  1300 UNIFIED [1300 864 343]
    M:  0438 658 466 [+61 438 658 466]
    E:  julian.coyne at unified.com.au
    W:  www.unified.com.au

On 5/09/2012 1:11 PM, Wyn Williams wrote:
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> Hello Julian
> Just my 2c (etc) but from the sounds of it that would be more suitable
> for stage two and further work (toolbar / Diazio etc) I think what was
> mentioned / the idea is is to have a kick ass responsive layout /
> graphical theme made by TV1 / a pro designer were as your theme sounds
> more technically concentrated.
>
> Maybe you could share and collaborate with André ? since the theme is
> going to be made by a dedicated designer / as a client project they
> will need specifications / requirements /  use cases / targeted groups
> etc all of which you would of all ready done / prepared when starting
> on the theme so would be good to get to them and save time from the
> limited time resource available.
>
> Your technical side of things / theme could then be used for a more
> "flashy" in a technical sense theme with there layout and graphics in
> stage two.
>
> Thoughts ?
>
> Wyn
>
> PS I am just making suggestions, looking to André / main peeps on this
> to decide
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 09/05/2012 07:52 AM, Julian Coyne wrote:
>> Hi All,
>>
>> Wow - that's an explosion of pent-up plone energy... awesome to
>> see!
>>
>> I haven't reviewed everything as yet, but I thought I'd better get
>> my thoughts out there (apologies if it is in conflict with any
>> subsequent discussion to what I've read).
>>
>> We have a theme called "plonetheme.unified" that cleanly
>> integrates bootstrap with Plone... in a neat and unified way [TM]
>> :-)
>>
>> What that translates to is 'not another generic bootstrap theme',
>> but rather one that respects Plone's visual identity, contains
>> compatible compiled CSS for legacy plone markup (context/standalone
>> anyone?), and overrides and a form layer for z3c.form and several
>> other technologies to bring some unification, simplification and
>> minimalism to the UI story.
>>
>> We have been working on it and refining it since bootstrap 1.x,
>> through 2.0 (looking at 2.1 presently).
>>
>> I was planning on throwing this into the ring as part of the new
>> Plone UI discussions (in fact I wanted to get thoughts on it before
>> or as part of the Sea Sprint) but didn't know where that would end
>> up as I'm not able to attend.
>>
>> It may remove a significant roadblock and help reduce the stalling
>> that's held up plone.com thus far, and allow us to turn something
>> great around for the project sooner.
>>
>> I've also been involved in the plone.com project since working on
>> the original marketing team and through the recent mailing list,
>> and I share Matt's frustrations on bringing some focus to the
>> project and making some actual progress.
>>
>> I think it would work well for the new plone.com project. It neatly
>> fit the criteria of a 'new modern theme' and is a neat reference
>> implementation of bootstrap (which the early emails in this thread
>> that I've read seemed happy with). Best of all it is available
>> now... which can hopefully shift the discussion from
>> meta-bikeshedding as we're doing now... to real proper bikeshedding
>> on the actual plone.com site ;-)
>>
>> At present - it pointedly *isn't* a diazo theme (as we've been
>> waiting for the toolbar integration or a clearer direction on clean
>> integration points to avoid what we've needed to do on other diazo
>> projects). Rather, it sets out to be a clean reference
>> implementation of a modern non-diazo plonetheme(.*).
>>
>> It is also quite opinionated in terms of legacy cruft and happily
>> destructive in terms of ripping out cruft from the registries
>> (including KSS for 4.1/4.2), and leaving a neat little Plone JS/CSS
>> footprint.
>>
>> Lastly, we worked on an API compatible modal overlay replacement
>> to "prepOverlay" from jqt-land, better defined HTML5 data-
>> semantics (and a compatible javascript API) and IMO considerably
>> tidier and more consistent UI/UX. The JS part isn't quite polished
>> but the rest is functioning quite neatly and we have it in use at
>> the moment.
>>
>> So its fairly feature complete, and hopefully will be helpful to
>> progressing things.
>>
>> Thanks all,
>>
>> Julian
>>
>> -- Julian Coyne Unified Systems T:  1300 UNIFIED [1300 864 343] M:
>> 0438 658 466 [+61 438 658 466] E:  julian.coyne at unified.com.au W:
>> www.unified.com.au
>>
>> Julian Coyne Unified Systems T:  1300 UNIFIED [1300 864 343] M:
>> 0438 658 466 [+61 438 658 466] E:  julian.coyne at unified.com.au W:
>> www.unified.com.au
>>
>> On 5/09/2012 11:30 AM, Wyn Williams wrote: Hello all +1 one on that
>> (theme/content), it is how most projects normally work although in
>> this case they will be very close.
>>
>> TV1 seem to be an experienced Plone house and Im sure they would
>> want to work with tools like the theme editor and Diazio anyway.
>>
>> Rock and roll then :)
>>
>> Wyn
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 09/05/2012 02:20 AM, Stone, Derrick J *HS wrote:
>>>>> The most important focus of this site is the content. It must
>>>>> be no bull-shizzle. The second most important focus should be
>>>>> an excellent, modern theme, which is responsive. Without
>>>>> these two items, Plone.com is not worth doing. It would be
>>>>> better for potential customers to simply wonder if the
>>>>> community has a professional standard.
>>>>>
>>>>> I do not think shell access should be required - Plone
>>>>> publishes content out of the box right? :p
>>>>>
>>>>> Derrick ________________________________________ From:
>>>>> plone-com-bounces at lists.plone.org
>>>>> [plone-com-bounces at lists.plone.org] On Behalf Of Dylan Jay
>>>>> [djay at pretaweb.com] Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2012 6:54 PM
>>>>> To: Alex Clark Cc: plone-com at lists.plone.org Subject: Re:
>>>>> [Plone-com] We need a new modern theme for plone.com.
>>>>>
>>>>> There's a lot of cooks in here already but since we just put
>>>>> together a site for our new service recently I'll put in 2c
>>>>> then go. - do content before the theme. The homepage in
>>>>> particular should support your main message. - we went for a
>>>>> design inspired by brightbox.com<http://brightbox.com> and
>>>>> squarespace.com<http://squarespace.com>. Long front page
>>>>> forming a tour of main key differentiators. - but use a
>>>>> professional designer, don't use pre rolled themes. - give
>>>>> the new theme editor a go.  Great way to get feedback as the
>>>>> theme is created and reduce friction created by deployment
>>>>> delays. Diazo ftw.
>>>>>
>>>>> Dylan Jay Technical solution manager PretaWeb 99552830
>>>>>
>>>>> On 05/09/2012, at 12:29 AM, Alex Clark
>>>>> <aclark at aclark.net<mailto:aclark at aclark.net>> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> As far as I can tell, this has not been discussed so:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Who wants to donate a new-modern-theme to the
>>>>> plone.com<http://plone.com> project? To get started, we're
>>>>> going to use the existing plone.org<http://plone.org> theme
>>>>> (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/plonetheme.ploneorg) but we hope
>>>>> to replace that with something better/newer later. If you
>>>>> have any ideas, please let us know. Ideally the theme
>>>>> requirements would be something like:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *   Based on Twitter bootstrap (but does not appear to be
>>>>> based on bootstrap, please) *   Responsive (included with
>>>>> bootstrap) * Diazo-powered
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> But any and all theme donations will be considered and
>>>>> appreciated.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Alex
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -- Alex Clark · http://pythonpackages.com
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________ Plone-com
>>>>> mailing list
>>>>> Plone-com at lists.plone.org<mailto:Plone-com at lists.plone.org>
>>>>> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-com
>>>>> _______________________________________________ Plone-com
>>>>> mailing list Plone-com at lists.plone.org
>>>>> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-com
>>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________ Plone-com mailing
>>> list Plone-com at lists.plone.org
>>> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-com
>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________ Plone-com mailing
>> list Plone-com at lists.plone.org
>> http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-com
>>
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