Darren Mothersele

Discourse is still at a very early stage, so there's no code to share just yet. At this stage most of the work is going into R&D. The priorities are (1) simple extensible structure, easily customised and rigorous cross browser compatibility, and (2) adopting best-practices for accesiblitiy, usability and seo/indexability.

As I mentioned in the last post on Discourse I have built the first version of this theme engine using Blueprint, but I'm also looking at the techniques used in Tripoli or possibly some combination of the two. Here's some links I've found useful...

1. Blueprint CSS provides a quick and robust grid layout mechanism for CSS
2. Tipoli also provides a layout plugin that supports more accessible and seo friendly ordering of content. One drawback of Blueprint is that it dictates the order of content within the HTML code. It makes more sense to have the flexibility to put all the content at the top of the HTML file, from an accessibility and SEO point of view.
3. Project Plan for a new default Drupal 7 theme describes "lightweight" and "heavyweight" theme engines, and the possiblity of including a new base theme in the core distribution of Drupal.
4. Acquia Marina is a professional looking theme from Acquia Drupal created by TopNotchThemes. Some nice techniques, in particular the use of Theme Settings API to provide customisation options for various parts of the templates. Certainly something any good base theme should support.
5. A List Apart articles on Typography including How to size text in CSS and Setting Type on the Web
6. Listamatic resources for turning lists into navigational devices.
7. Drupal.org redesigns or "The death of the photoshop mockup"? Look at the amazing work Mark Boulton has been doing on the Drupal.org redesign project. There's not a single Photoshop mockup in sight - it's all been presented as HTML/CSS, using tools like Blueprint, and Polypage.