Prometheus ­ Administration Themes ­ Textgarden.org

Comments

1. 

   Zander asked me for my thoughts on this theme, and I’m glad he did because it made me realize I haven’t bothered using any admin themes since so much progress has been made with Txp towards making it easier to customize and theme the admin side, and I think a certain plugin is involved too? (If someone was new to theming the admin side of Txp, are there concise instructions to walk them through that somewhere?)

   Anyway, as for this theme, I like it a lot; it gives a more progressive (or modern, if you will) look to the admin side, the default theme of which is getting pretty old by this point. I especially like the ergonomic and convenience improvements, which include:

   • Bringing the Logout link to top of screen.
   • Moving the Preview tab out as it’s own top button. (Nice!)
   • Taking the Txp logo out of the “branding” location and moving it to bottom as a “system identification” feature.
   • Using the bottom of screen for resources. Great. (If it was easy to add to or edit those links, even better still.)

   I also like breaking away from the “folder” tabs concept to this more contextual association design, though that’s arguably more a presentation consideration than ergonomic.

   There are just a few presentational things that I can tell from the available screenshots here that I’m not particularly a fan of, but that’s just me (things I would modify if I were to use this theme):

   • I don’t really see the point of the icons in the primary tabs or the two button links at top, other than just being there for the sake of it. To me it’s just visual pollution agains the text labels that are so much better on their own. (Except for the icons used on the editing preview functions—right of body field—which I find to be OK.)
   • Expanding on the first point, the text labels in the primary tabs, plus the Preview and Logout button labels, might have more prominence (as an alternate to using icons) if they were all-caps. The secondary function labels are fine as is.
   • Expanding further, the primary, secondary and button links at top might do with a different sans-serif font (Droid Sans?) to help stand them apart from the rest of the panel labels/headers/etc.
   • Lastly, and trivial, I’m not a fan of the blue. Just for kicks, if the two shades of blue were made into two shades of Txp yellow (keeping the black and gray areas), that would be a home run for me.

   Zander, if you made another theme with the changes the I suggested, and called it something like Mjöllnir (the name of Thor’s hammer; having deference to Txp’s hammer), it would become my new admin theme. In fact, I could imagine Mjöllnir becoming the new default theme in the core, if but with a little less reliance on the CSS3, if that was thought needed. :)

   (Arggh. No Textile list support here.)

   01/31/10

   Destry Wion

   

2. 

   Thanks for that Destry. I’m not sure you would quite describe it as a “walk-through”, but I did write an article here describing the method of creating an admin theme.

   (I added the list style for you. Still not Textile though.)

   01/31/10

   Stuart

   

3. 

   This looks stunning, I can’t wait to try it out. I’m wondering what is the licensing on themes? If I wanted to take this and make some changes and then release it here, would I just attribute it, like “Based on Prometheus by Zander…etc?”

   Thanks,

   02/05/10

   Nora Brown