[ Concept ] : Clarity

[Burpee]

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Clarity

--- The idea
The idea behind this theme is to make an accessible theme. The colors chosen for this theme are easy to read and guide the user through the system. Every section has it's own color associated with it. The profile has a light yellowish color, the statistics have a light red color, news has a light blue color and searching is light orange. These colors are easily changeable as the forum owner desires through the stylesheet. Each "block" also has a large logo that explains the content of the screen as it's background. This will also guide not only old users but also new users to the right section. As these logo's are all backgrounds it will be easy for a new forum owner to edit these backgrounds as they wish. The backgrounds and colors will also be shown as backgrounds for each section they are referring to, so when viewing the stats page you'll see a light red screen with the stats logo as it's background.


Clarity.1.jpg

--- Explanation of the preview
In the file Clarity.1.jpg, the width of the theme is not displayed as it will be. That's why it may seem somewhat cluttered at the moment. In the process of making this theme I intend to clear up the view by making the bars smaller and using x-repeat backgrounds, which are also easy to edit by new users.

--- White space
I also wish to create a system that makes maximum use of the screen. Many themes use unnecessary space by having white space outside of their border and then white space inside of their border. I believe that the white space outside a border is unnecessary if you increase the white space inside the tables a slight bit. Ideas on how to do this best are welcome ofcourse.

--- The buttons
As you can see in the preview, the buttons consist mainly of text. Buttons don't need to be graphics. If we can achieve nice buttons using text only, I think this will be preferrable to creating graphical buttons. A way of allowing the user to choose wether they want graphical buttons or textual buttons should however be thought up.

--- Message icons
The icons made by alienine are great. However they are often unclear because of their flat color. I think that their visibility should be increased either by using more noticeable colors or by changing them slightly by for example making bigger borders around the icons.
As Tom points out below, we should make the difference between the sticky icons and the regular post icons a lot clearer.

--- The calendar
Below you can find a link to a small preview of a calendar. I believe this calendar has some advantages over the regular calendar:

• A vertical week display
  Because of this the amount of vertical bars and thus the width of each day is increased. Instead of having to fit in 7 bars, you now only have 5 and thus have more space to put in text.
• One border is needed to put in the legenda of what everything means, it's clear , it's simple and imo it looks nice.

This preview of the calendar does not yet have any navigational buttons. The eventual version will be a lot along the lines of the current calendar as this will make any upgrades to the calendar easier.

Clarity.calendar.htm

--- The fonts
To make the difference between navigation and the content and to keep most users happy I intend to keep the content of posts and such in Verdana. Navigational features will become mostly Arial, using bold and/or italic wherever it seems fitting.

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I'd love to hear some comments about this idea. Improvements to the concept will be added. I wrote this a while ago but I've been too lazy to actually do anything with it. I don't really want to do this entirely by myself as I don't have all the knowhow on how to do it and I believe that others could do a better job at this than I could. If somebody is interested in creating this theme with me, post here.
If this is done before the contest deadline ends, I want to ask the developers on this forum to split any winnings we might have amongst the theme creators.

[nil]

Very nice concept...  That would be perfect to include in the SMF 1.0 as it would help new users to figure out how to use a forum and it just looks cool.

I do have to say though that I am slightly partial to the current calender as it is what I am used to.  Maybe instead of that being the only calender for your theme you make it user selectable...

Good luck with the project I look forward to downloading it!

[Tom]

What you have looks good so far. 

Maybe differentiate the sticky topics from the rest of the topics a bit more? They way they currently, and are and normally done, it's not that easy to see a major difference between the two.

[Burpee]

Added

[A.M.A]

Indeed a great concept that I would love to see it in action .. hope you will find someone who will work with you on this one .. but even if you did not I guess you can do it by yourself and in case you got any problems we are here

[bloc]

Looks interesting. Hopefully you'll find someone to help out.

[roboter88]

I think also this is great idea!
Cause what i miss everywhere is a real default theme which is minimalistic as possibel.

Would be good for customizing cause its just basics.

For fonts its best to use just 1 and then use diffrent font size and such.

[Burpee]

For fonts its best to use just 1 and then use diffrent font size and such.

Well, it should be easy to see which of the two options would suit best. And ofcourse all navigation would be defined in the stylesheet, so it'd just be a matter of changing one thing.

[[Unknown]]

Using just one font isn't *always* best... sometimes, you want to make something look different to the eye, but not be less readable.

-[Unknown]

[roboter88]

Ok but normaly under off- print circumstances you use a Font Face which holds a wide varity for 1 font.

Just have a look inside a newspaper or magazin they use 1 Font Face.

eg.
FF Meta Condensed which includes:
Condensed Normal Roman
Condensed Normal LF Roman
Condensed Normal Expert
Condensed Book Roman
and 14 others...

Also you will have diffrent fonts (eg. adverts).
I dont say its a must and as Burpee says the navigation could be diffrent i agree when its looks ok :-)
With custom css you can design something similar to an off-print Font Face.

Just some thougths mybe a typogrphy guy is around and point something out if im wrong :-)

I thought this is a basic typo rule to stick with 1 font or Font Face?

[[Unknown]]

Not always, and you always want to stick with more common fonts than what you named.  And list alternatives.  And always at the end have a class/family.

-[Unknown]

[Burpee]

Any more feedback?
Perhaps some of you have a modification to your theme that you would consider worthy of being entered as a standard feature of a theme. I'm personally thinking of the following few:

• New personal message button/image
• New Posts Marked
• Member group colors legend in "Who's online"

If you think some of these shouldn't be added, please convince me of not adding them

[homeslice]

is this going to be released ?

[Burpee]

Nope.