New Theme for Ubercart.org

Posts: 3227
Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Alrighty, I've been tweaking the Pixture theme this week and am getting close to a switch from the current Ubertheme to this one. There's a little less blue, but there's a lot more content space and a sharper look. After I finish tweaking the generals about it, I'll work on a new front page and figure out what to do with the menus and such... our Navigation is getting a bit unwieldy, and judging by our Google Analytics site overlay, it's not very effective and connecting users to information. Eye-wink

So, I've given any logged in user the ability to switch their theme. If you don't mind, take a minute to switch over to Pixture and let me know what you think. If you like it, feel free to keep it on, though I know there are some rough spots in it atm.

Example feedback: I think that w/ the smaller node links I need to bring prominence to the Add new comment and reply links, especially for the forums.

I'm open to any fresh ideas on how to make the theme or the site in general a better place to congregate and promote the project!

Posts: 793
Joined: 08/14/2007
Bug FinderEarly adopter... addicted to alphas.Getting busy with the Ubercode.

I like it a lot. I'll keep it on for now, and as I get deeper into it, let you know if I have any issues.

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Posts: 3227
Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Thanks, tP. I'm getting more and more excited about it as I tweak it and bring the pieces together. I just installed Panels 2 and am working out a similar front page... this time hopefully a little more helpful for newbies and old-timers. You can check it out now, as I've set it as the site-wide front page. This won't affect the old theme, because it was using an override in the theme. Sticking out tongue

I'll be adding in some quick links like we had before, but not near as many and hopefully to more helpful pages. I suppose I'll also need to give the community page a facelift, so I'm open to any ideas.

Can't wait to get home and check out the colors on my CRT. Eye-wink

Posts: 7
Joined: 11/05/2007

OMG! Ubercart.org is all grown up!

Seriously, you now have a 'mature' theme that will reflect better on the product.

The forums as you know need a bit of work. (I don't think the blue works - but I'm using a monitor that's a bit broken [I don't see reds on it] so that may just be me. Adding icons to the "add new comment" "login" "quote" etc links would be nice (I believe that humans like to click pictures.)

I love the 'aquaish' header, too!

~silverwing

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Land of Midnight online serial | Misguided Thoughts

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Land of Midnight online serial | Misguided Thoughts

Posts: 2
Joined: 05/05/2008

I like the older one better. It was much more fitting the current Web 2.0 trends and showed Ubercart as a really cool product. The new theme (Pixture) looks a bit dated.

Posts: 48
Joined: 01/17/2008

I agree, sorry guys. Is there a way we can choose our own theme in our account?

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Good with CSS - Bad with Code. Smiling

Posts: 3227
Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Not sure about leaving both themes up... the old one overrode the front page manually, so there was really no way to customize it without directly editing HTML in the theme. That = no bueno. Also, other on-site configuration stuff (like blocks and some Views) would make it illogical to attempt to maintain two separate themes on a site.

Posts: 11
Joined: 04/23/2008

I think the new theme looks tight.

Posts: 1
Joined: 08/19/2007

Overall the theme looks fine. One bug however, in Safari 3 the words in the main navigation have no space underneath them to separate them from the bottom line. Please see screen shot.

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ubercart_safari_nav_bug.jpg24.67 KB
Posts: 234
Joined: 11/19/2007
Bug FinderGetting busy with the Ubercode.

I'm a fan of the fresh look. I think at first glance this theme makes Ubercart.org look like a Drupal site, where the old theme was a little less obvious...but I don't consider that a bad thing. The homepage is going to be key, so I guess that will end up getting the majority of the tinkering. One idea I had that I'd find useful there is to see a logged in User's recent activity based on their Track page.

A lil' bug I noticed was at the top of the 'Installing Ubercart' pages. The top line of (for Ubercart beta & Drupal 5.x) is getting cut off for me in Firefox.

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Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Thanks for the bug reports.

@thesafari: I don't think I have the capacity to test locally in Safari, but if you can let me know what style tweak fixes it for you I'd be happy to implement it.

Posts: 70
Joined: 04/05/2008
Bug Finder

Hey Ryan and all.

I dont like it. But i'll explain why to make this criticism of mine a little bit constructive.

As someone else wrote before (cant see who without clicking back on my browser - really hate that Sticking out tongue) the new template makes Ubercart look ... Uberdated.

And it's not the template's fault, because Pixture is nice. Just check this screenshot: http://drupal.org/node/250059

As you see on the screenshot using default "drupal colors", they dont contrast blue with more blue, they put blue against black. And then they have blue tonalities for the menus, etc.

On our case, we have orange on top, orange on the menu bar, more orange on the side menus, some brown on the links, and more orange on the footer. This is like a bad Tang commercial! Sticking out tongue

Blue is like the sea, the sky, coolness and stuff.
Orange and brown is like.. you know..

I'm not saying to ditch the orange color, just make it work against a good color, like gray or purple. Purple could work, maybe, if played well.

Blue is also fine. Actually, the Orange/Blue combo is on the Ubercart logo.

Give this baby some web 2.0 edge!

Posts: 410
Joined: 08/13/2007
Bug FinderEarly adopter... addicted to alphas.Getting busy with the Ubercode.Internationalizationizer

I like both design, but I prefer the old one a little more. This one looks like the drupal.org site a little too much, the previous one was more original.

But you have to note a design with the usability too, so I need some time to have a real opinion about it ^^

Posts: 22
Joined: 12/18/2007
Bug Finder

are there any plans of using the project module for the contributions. with the project module issues etc for a contribution would be much more structured

i've used the project module for an intranet site and it works pretty good imho

Posts: 33
Joined: 11/21/2007
Bug Finder

Thanks for the theme update Ryan, I like this theme a lot more then the last one. I only have one question, Do you have a non stretched logo? if not I can create a vector version of your logo to fix this and future problems.

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Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

@tom-d: I've got a vector logo, but it is kinda blurry... I'd love it if you could sharpen that up somehow. PM me your e-mail address, and I can send you the file.

Regarding the Web 2.0 look... I'm actually not a big fan of it. I guess that's coming through in the design change. Eye-wink But I'm also not a designer, so I'm dependent on the best efforts of others and tweak as necessary. I'm actually using the blue Pixture theme on my blog, and I'm not sure it looks as sharp as that screenshot. I can pass around the modified version of Pixture I'm using if someone wants to give the primary links row color some love or toy around with other combinations. I prefer the black row w/ the blue theme, but it just didn't look right with the orange. Sticking out tongue

My main beefs w/ the 2.0 look are font size and wasted space. We simply couldn't get any info on the screen. For example, looking at the front page now vs. before, there's actually useful information "above the fold." Before in 1024x768 resolution, we had the logo, some unhelpful quick links (I say unhelpful b/c less than 1% of our visitors used them based on the Google Site Overlay), and the top halves of the news/forum blocks. Now there's actually a description of the project on the front page (a must) and room for a little more info and possible space for sponsor links or something.

So... still a work in progress, and keep those comments coming. Cool

Posts: 2
Joined: 05/05/2008

good points, but web 2.0 doesn't have to be useless or necessarily in the largest font sizes.... if you look at the CakePHP layout (http://www.cakephp.org/) except for the font size it seems to have more info above the fold than the old theme?

I mean, if there's no alternative available, usability seems to come first, but if the design doesn't look catchy, people might dismiss Ubercart as an older system like osCommerce and pass on trying it. All I am saying is that ideally a good marketing image should go hand in hand with good usability, but in case they don't, they should be handled like trade-offs. That means balanced, not one for the other.

But Pixture is good and with some more flashiness to it it should work.

PS: One more good web 2.0 theme - Drupal.org itself.

Posts: 7
Joined: 11/05/2007

I think it's important to remember that this is a business site and its purpose is to get information to people as efficiently as possible - even if it means it wont look ubercool.

People are here to learn about Ubercart, not to marvel in the sites css stylesheet.

~silverwing
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Land of Midnight online serial | Misguided Thoughts

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Land of Midnight online serial | Misguided Thoughts

Posts: 70
Joined: 08/07/2007

I think the old one looked much nicer. That being said, this one has a much simpler UI.

Posts: 72
Joined: 08/31/2007
Bug FinderInternationalizationizerNot KulvikThe other woman.

oh wow! i not around for a few weeks and a new überlook greets me. Ü now, i've always said i love orange. so no question that i like the colors. but we seriously need to do something about the blue forums. it doesn't go. Sad and come to think of it, neither do the sharp forum corners -- they don't go with the nice rounded corners of the right nav.

but orange makes me happy. so im biased about the overall look. Smiling

Posts: 3227
Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Good call on the blocky forums. I'd be happy to give them a facelift if someone has some CSS mojo to lend to the effort. Smiling

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Joined: 08/15/2007

Looks really cool, just dislike the fuzziness of the UC logo in the top left corner. Keep up the good work.

Posts: 3227
Joined: 08/07/2007
AdministratorHead Code Monkey - I eat bugs.

Thanks, z3b. Funny you should mention it... tom-d here from Polybonk sent me a sharp version that I'll go ahead and test/add in now. Thanks for the reminder. Eye-wink

EDIT: Added it in... but I guess that means everyone has to refresh to see it. Sad

EDIT 2: Maybe not... I added a query string. Let me know if it doesn't show by itself.

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Joined: 08/15/2007

Looking way better, and your query seemed to do the trick, ie: didn't have to clear the cache to see the new version.

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Joined: 12/28/2007
Uber DonorBug Finder

Congrats for the face lift! However, font size could be bigger? ...or is it just me suffering with eyes Eye-wink

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Joined: 10/11/2007

hows panels 2 intergration with this theme working out?

I mention this because i had some issues with the sidebars getting pushed off the page on smaller screensizes.

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Joined: 08/28/2007
Early adopter... addicted to alphas.Not Kulvik

Hi Ryan, I'll have a go at improving the theme if you'd like.