Now is when I outline some of the ideas Andy and I are kicking around for the next Sandbox revision. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be a 1.0 in no time. But we’re still trying to resolve a few issues, and would like some feedback on those issues. And any others that you might have, too.
- Sandbox skins/menu
- The
#globalnavoption - Improving semantics
- Simplify, simplify, simplify
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Sandbox skins/menu
The first question at hand is, why do we need a Sandbox Skins menu? There are issues related to the minimalist skins using
@importto piggy-back off the main style.css, but perhaps we can do away with this menu and place the layout CSS in snippets in the readme.html.There’s also the possibility of changing the Sandbox Skins menu to become a Sandbox CSS menu, where CSS is added just like on WordPress.com blogs (with the upgrade). You can input and edit your CSS for the Sandbox. The CSS output would be immaculate and consistent.
As we began talking about possibilities here, I was working on getting a site up for Sandbox skins. I’ve paused for the moment, though I know it will still be useful for the Sandbox, because we’re question how the Sandbox uses skins. What do you think?
There are already quite a few skins for the Sandbox available:
- Adam’s Unsleepable
- Reaper-X’s ChinaRed
- And Reaper-X’s X-Cuberik
- Trevor’s k2 lite
- Wank’s unique The Literary Life
- Zeo’s Sandbox K2
Keep in mind that these were all completed within seven days of first release of the Sandbox (and those are just the ones I found). Seven days with changes to the Sandbox? Well done all, and take that, Blogging Pro.
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The
#globalnavoptionAnyhow, we’re also wondering if we should just remove the “Global Navigation” option as set in the skin
.cssfile. Perhaps we should just fix it there. It seems that part of the Sandbox beauty is making CSS “conditionals” with the dynamic classes.Could the same results be produced with CSS alone? Without necessarily making it a hard-coded option?
In case you’re not familiar with this, there is an option for skin developers to set a “Global Navigation: Y/N” in the skin
.cssfile. This allows the theme to produce a list of pages below the header and before the content. Blogs on WordPress.com using the Sandbox will always have the#globalnavenabled. -
Improving semantics
How can we improve the markup and the semantic nature of the Sandbox theme within the context of WordPress and blogging? Along these lines, we want to take advantage of sound standards (e.g., XHTML tags, XFN, hAtom).
We’ve tried to make the Sandbox as semantic and forward-compatible as possible. The dynamic classes and the overall structure of the Sandbox make it friendly to beginners, actually. Not having to deal with PHP and focus on CSS (and images, too) is a great benefit to learners. So what are we forgetting? How could we improve the Sandbox’s semantic nature?
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Simplify, simplify, simplify
Andy said to me recently,
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Andy was, actually, quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Both of them are correct.I’m always up to cutting stuff out. I despise bloat. This just increases the learning-curve and complicates its functions. This is a quesiton, but it’s also a context to consider when looking at the Sandbox. How can we make this whole process simpler? How can the user experience be more enjoyable?
As I mentioned in my previous post, I think skinning the Sandbox is quite a lot of fun. It’s nice, for a change, to just use CSS and design something clever, creative. This is what we want to encourage: enjoying. So as we approach 1.0, how can we improve the Sandbox so that is enjoyable for the largest group possible? And yet remains terribly simple—on the inside and out.
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And . . . ?
You’ve read though this. Now, get a cup of coffee or tea, have a smoke, whatever, and come back with your ideas. You’ve seen, hopefully, that Andy and I value your ideas and feedback. So bring it.
20 Comments
#globalnavinside#header. -ve margin are bad.blockquoteinstead ofdivfor#blog-description«and»are so dead. Long live←and→entry-summaryclass whenthe_excerptis used.Is that Sandbox theme on Google code? +1
I don’t think I quite get the Sandbox Skins and Sandbox CSS stuff right now. Do you mean we will enter the CSS directly into the WordPress admin interface and do away with the skins folder?
Currently I use Sandbox with a custom skin that is based on the Kubric skin. The way I do it is to create a new skin CSS file, use
@importto grab thekubrick.csscode and then just redefine the stuff I want to change (like the header image and colors).That way I can realy on the upstream designers (Scott and Andy) to make changes to the skin (when say a new version of Sandbox is released) and let me get a good overview of what I actually changed. The wonders of CSS!
And what about skins that ship with images (icons, headers, etc.)? Where do the artwork go?
Right now, I’ve put my art in a
images/directory in the Sandbox theme directory.Here’s a CSS related feature I would like to see (based on the way things are now): When logged in as admin, all the installed skins should be available as alternative stylesheets so I can select them in the browsers “view/style” menu. Great for developing skins and trying them out!
On the
#globnavoption: My gut corroborated my knee-jerk and told me that having the “Global Navigation: Y/N” in the CSS file is not a very good choice. Better to use CSS and selector to hide/show them.BTW, what plugins do you use on this blog for the comments and the geo stuff in the header?
I’d leave
#globalnavalways on. You can hide it so easily, I don’t see why it shouldn’t be on there. Other than that, I’m pretty happy. I’d love to see a site to show off Sandbox Skins, though!Another thing I was thinking of - is there a way to have a Sandbox Skin wholly contained in a subfolder (like Wordpress plugins)…? That would probably be a nice little techie add-on, and it would help keep people’s directories clean if they have a bunch of skins with images included.
i’d agree that #globalnav should always be on, and hidden by CSS.
as far as the skins menu… i don’t know.
back around minimalist sandbox 0.1, i assumed you were going to use a radio list to select layouts, and then select skins seperately.
if you do add a field for entering CSS, you’ll run into problems with image based themes.
actually, for non-wordpress.com skins, you could use a
style.phpso that we could distribute one skin, that could work with multiple layouts or pull one layout.but then, that might be too scary for most theme authors. perhaps you could add a different option, instead of a Y/N for the nav menu, theme authors could insert 1c/2c-l/2c-r/3c-r/3c-l/3c-b/none/user
to import the desired layout.
Hey Scott,
I’ve got mixed feelings about the Y/N thing since I think I’d almost always use N (unlike most that have commented) and I really don’t like hiding stuff with CSS when I don’t have to.
I need to partially agree with Zeo on the « and » thing (as well as in the title and other nav stuff). This theme has tremendous possibilities for making alternate or user-side Accessibility skins but from what I understand symbols like those are extremely annoying to people using screen-readers. Zeo’s suggestion likely will be decoded as a question mark I believe. Since the theme seems to be transforming into something heavily standards based, Accessibility provisions/features might be a good idea to put on the roadmap. Up to you guys though, let me know if you want some help or resources if you go that route.
My big request is to get as much of the hard-coded stuff out as possible. It’s fun to play with as is, but using it long term I would eventually edit the holy php to at least change the wording of things, which hopefully wouldn’t affect skinning.
But, Is there any reason in particular for the single post page .entry-meta silliness? hehe. It’s almost entirely hardcoded with almost very few styling options or even selectors there unless I’m mistaken. The comment form is rather restrictive as well. What if I want to say that I *WILL* be sharing emails with everyone as well as your social security number?
Finally, I think there should at least be a toggle for the default widgets if we want to use Sidebar Modules or Widgets but not in that manner.
Oh, with your standards question, there’s plenty plenty plenty of directions to go in… if you want to stick with working on microformats right now, perhaps look into XOXO (or whatever became of it) for lists such as pages, categories, archives, whatever… I think it would fit in very well and be useful for further styling of those elements. I also mentioned some rel-tag stuff to Andy (as well as an idea for easy replacement of hardcoded text) and I believe I was scoffed at.
JÄ?
I’m thinking of one feature from veryplaintxt that I miss in Sandbox. That is the field for entering some text to go in the footer (for copyright notices and licenses, disclaimers, and the like). Maybe that should even be integrated with the widgets plugin.
Actually I think Sandbox should couple with a CSS editor plugin. Something a la new blogger template editor.
I agree with Björn. I had that in mind too but forgot to mention it. Right now I have to edit the
footer.phpbut that make me feel tainted.Thanks for the great comments, all. I think based on what we’ve heard and experience so far, the
#globalnavis best to just become a part of the Sandbox, not an option.It also seems evident that how the Sandbox uses skins will change—for something simpler, but yet known. Here are some more specific comments:
@Zeo: The
.entry-summaryclass is a part of the hAtom specification, so I don’t see why not. I think instances of«/»will just get zapped. The blog tagline is not a quotation, so we’ll leave it as adiv. Thanks, Zeo.@Anders: As of right now, I would place images within the skins folder. So for the “New” skin, I would probably create a
../skins/new/folder. And geo stuff in the header is just what I put there, no plugin. The comments are powered by the “Live Comment Preview” plugin, available somewhere. Appreciate all the feedback, Anders.@Trevor: Interesting thought on the location of skins. Hmm. We’ll consider this as we rework how skins work with the Sandbox. Cheers.
@Adam: Also some good ideas about the skins. I had totally forgotten about pre-processing the stylesheets, ala PHP. Don’t think we’ll go that way, just because we need to keep the Sandbox working the same across platforms. Or as similar as possible. And I’d also forgotten about the radio buttons. Considering . . . (Thanks, Adam)
@Ja: As for wording of items here and there, you can always filter it instead of reworking the theme files, though that’s really a personal thing. The
.entry-metahas been giving us a lot of trouble recently and we’ve thought about it a lot.The problem is going with a
ul listructure, which is lovely and semantic, is that it is damn hard to style any way other than something resembling a list, and it really increases the learning curve for beginners.The comment form, though, is getting reworked.
And as far as I understand modules, those work if Widgets work, correct? We are strongly adverse to including any plugin support except for widgets. Sandbox is not K2. It is the opposite of K2. K2 tries to do everything, where as the Sandbox has one explicit purpose.
XOXO also complicates the sidebar code, Widgets integration, and generally the amount of knowledge users will need. These are all good suggestions, Ja, and they may come up again.
@Bjorn: We originally widget-ized the header and footer for the Sandbox, but then removed it. See, and I think this is valid, if I create a skin for the Sandbox, I’ll need to add a create deal of CSS to account for the possibilities of widgets in the header/footer; however, it might be a concession to add a blank footer widget. Still considering. Thanks.
@Albert: This is a alternative to the Sandbox Skins menu that we really like. What you’re suggesting is similar to what is on wp.com. While there are some complications with this (images, base skin/style), it’s something that is still in the running.
Thank you all for taking the time to share your thoughts. It’s appreciated. We’re working on the next major release of the Sandbox right now, and I’ll be posting about it soon.
Scott,
Thanks for the well thought out reply and considering all of these suggestions!
Hmm.. I definitely see your issue with the .entry-meta. I don’t have a spare braincell to work on it right now, but if I do think of any feasible alternatives I’ll let you know.
As far as widgets and side bar modules, I have to apologize for the misunderstanding. I was under the impression that default behaviour of sandbox would block aspects of SBM but I was mistaken… I just tried it out and it actually works wonderfully together. I wasn’t suggesting the theme be more like K2 or anything like K2, though now that I think about it both have a couple things in common: ease of use for the beginner and power for the more experienced user. K2 works great and supports integrated styling of many popular plugins so it’s easy for new users right out of the box (they also have css styling via schemes). Sandbox makes it extremely for the new user to customize the look of the theme through skins and css changes. The difference is that K2 has become more of a hacker’s theme while Sandbox gets its powers from strong semantics and tons of selectors. My aim is to see that Sandbox doesn’t become a commonly modded theme like K2 or the skinning concept will deteriorate I fear. Do you see where I’m coming from with that? Oh, and yes, it just so happens that despite the huge difference in approaches, K2 and Sandbox are the themes that appeal to me the most far and away.
In thinking about it there may be confusion as to whether Sandbox is a building-block theme as the original intention of its predecessor or a CSS Zen-Garden style type thing for skinning… or both. Heck, I’m pretty positive it’s the latter and you’re focused on sticking to the semantics, standards, and styling extensibility… but even I’m not sure.
Anyhow, if you do give further thought to any of the things I mentioned, I think the accessibility considerations would be the best to return to at some point. I’ll likely give you a couple example skins eventually.
And I agree the idea with about a css editor is terrific and could be wonderful used as a learning tool!
Sorry for writing too much. It’s a bad habit.
JÄ?
I see a few raquo and laquo have been removed. BTW, there still are a pair left in:
single.php:10 single.php:48
%link »single.php:9 single.php:47
« %link(What I can see from editing my PO files.)
My only complaint about Sandbox so far is that the
<!-- <?php trackback_rdf() ?> -->autodiscovery code was nowhere to be found in the template, so I had to add this in.Hey guys,
Not sure if anyone else has an issue with the Sandbox theme comments box, but in some browers it moves all the way to the right passing through my two right-side sidebars.
Drives me nuts but I have no idea how to fix it…
Chris: let us know which skin you’re using and the browsers which are shifting it. I’ll happily have a look and see what help I can provide.
Hey Scott,
LOVE your theme. Its amazing!
The comment bar moves appears all the way to the right side of the screen (intersecting with my two left-side columns) when in IE 6.0.
Meanwhile In Firefox the comment box keeps scrolling to the right when your text hits the end of the box (when you are trying to type a comment.
I am using the ‘Three-Column Minimalist R 1.0″ sandbox skin.
I’m brand new in CSS and trying to figure out how to solve the issue…
Hey Chris: I see what you mean in IE. But I think what you’re describing in Firefox is actually correct behavoir. You mean that it keeps scrolling when the text has no breaks in it, right? That’s fine.
For IE, though, try changing the width of the comment box from a percetage (66%) to a fixed or em-based width, for elasticity, e.g.,
textarea#comment { width: 15em; }. See if that doesn’t help.Hi Scott
I love your minimalist themes and your site in general. I looked through the comments and 99% of it went right over my head, and yes, I am a rank beginner blogger boldly planning to download your theme, probably sandbox, and host it on dreamhost. Probably foolish for a beginner but what the heck. I’ll give you better feedback once I get up and running. Maybe I should say, if.
I’m thinking about one other thing that I find myself having to change manually in the theme, and is something I imagine a lot of people want to change.
That is the link to the post author attached to each post. Since these don’t make much sense for single-writer blogs, I’m thinking Sandbox should have a toggle that would let the user turn the display of that off.
One might want to make that a general “single writer” option, also removing some other stuff that makes no sense for those kinds of blogs, though I can’t think of anything else.
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