Personally... (based on different layouts I've seen recently)

Right Sidebar (as usual, load the content first before the sidebars)
- Top section - wide
- lower section - left and right narrow sidebars

Optional:
Bottom sidebar (with 3 columns)
and/or
Top sidebar (with 3 columns)

I'll say, more of corporate and semi-corporate for b2evolution. Get the attention of the public that we have new and unique designs they can only find in b2evolution. (Let them be the one to convert from b2evo to WP for example :p )

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Now about the naming, I did it like this -> http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?p=89145#89145

Wow I'm about to upgrade a web with a right sidebar that loads first. It looks cool but ... the sidebar loads first. And hey can't you use style to have the main body load first and be on the right? I did a skin once with a "reasonably simple" switch for the user to throw that moved the sidebar...

I agree with the "more on corporate" bits. It's a lack in blogging skins is the thing, and given the desire for b2evo to be more grown up and move more towards a "CMS with blogging capability" than "Blog with CMS capability" it makes sense.

Another thing I like is having permalink pages be different than multipost pages. evopress does it that way, but not enough. I totally lost the skin I was tinkering with that I wanted for myself, but it would have put a semi-sidebar *under* the full width main body on permalink pages.

Anyway I like 2 column because 3 column looks more businessy ... even though I think there should be more businessy skins available. I liked "orange". It's gone. I liked "l33t_gray". It's gone (and it had a nasty bug that ate images so maybe byebye is okay eh?). DIFFERENT should be the key thought process though. Any monkey can fill a checklist. An artist creates something unique even if that something happens to be describable with a checklist system. For example I once did a skin that was designed to be undecipherable. It randomly decided which version of ugly each visitor got, but in all cases the sidebar and main body alternated left and right, and the color contrasts made you sick. I thought it was beautiful given that it was like nothing else out there anywhere. *DIFFERENT* eh?

How about a skin that flows text around a background image AND the background image doesn't scroll with the page? That would be way cool for permalink pages (given the right image of course).

EdB wrote:

Wow I'm about to upgrade a web with a right sidebar that loads first. It looks cool but ... the sidebar loads first. And hey can't you use style to have the main body load first and be on the right? I did a skin once with a "reasonably simple" switch for the user to throw that moved the sidebar...

Yes of course it's possible ;) I used to do that before (it was fun, some of my friends were asking me how I did it - CSS! Stop using tables!! - the old days..)

Hmm.. you know what, I think it is time that the "Web 1.0" layout (sidebar on the left side) to be back. The reasoning behind putting the sidebar on the right side was pre-CSS, the only way to do that w/o using JS is to position the sidebar at the bottom of the HTML in a Table-layout.

In the CSS era, we can do anything, even hide a "Pi" where a user have to press a combo-key then it will show up, when clicked, will lead them to a secret hacker site "Mess with the best, die like the rest" :p hehe.

So yeah, I'll say, new skins with left sidebar but it loads last! Let's make b2evo even more unique.

I thought there was also something about "the cursor roams the right side first" thing going on. Like, somehow having the sidebar on the right encouraged peeps to click on stuff. Dunno though. Picked that up here in the forums by someone who I've sorta turned into (person with a lot of posts relative to others) and now I pretty much know that post count only means "too much free time" and has nothing to do with "knows stuff" ;)

EdB wrote:

I thought there was also something about "the cursor roams the right side first" thing going on. Like, somehow having the sidebar on the right encouraged peeps to click on stuff. Dunno though. Picked that up here in the forums by someone who I've sorta turned into (person with a lot of posts relative to others) and now I pretty much know that post count only means "too much free time" and has nothing to do with "knows stuff" ;)

I heard that. I also heard that the eyes tend to look on the left side first, so the content must be on the left side.

But I dunno, lol. The only reasoning I regularly heard was about the 'loading', basically due to using tables for layout. I even recall when CSS floating arrived, everybody was crazy. But the right-sidebar got stuck hehehe.

Hey back to the original questions: I'm into non-fixed width skins myself. People who fix it wider than my monitor with my aggregator open allows suck because I don't like horizontal scroll bars ... and I sometimes have my aggregator open and updating my feeds.

I dunno what you call them, but with a bit of percentage for margins left and right the rest just fills in the middle. Though that's a drag for visitors with super-wide monitors I guess.

EdB wrote:

Hey back to the original questions: I'm into non-fixed width skins myself. People who fix it wider than my monitor with my aggregator open allows suck because I don't like horizontal scroll bars ... and I sometimes have my aggregator open and updating my feeds.

I dunno what you call them, but with a bit of percentage for margins left and right the rest just fills in the middle. Though that's a drag for visitors with super-wide monitors I guess.

Oh, yes I agree with that.

How I've seen it done:
1) Sidebar (left/right) - fixed
2) Header area - avoid graphic backgrounds (however I've seen one wherein he created a long header until to the point it can repeat itself flawlessly. When the resolution is adjusted, it adjusts gracefully)
3) Footer, same as #2

The problem will be embeds like YouTubes and Photo Slides. I'm not sure if it is possible to put a "minimum" width for the content area itself w/o using JS (I may be wrong, but in CSS3 it is possible).

Laibcoms wrote:

I'm not sure if it is possible to put a "minimum" width for the content area itself w/o using JS (I may be wrong, but in CSS3 it is possible).

it is. however ie6 does not understand as always.. ie google code makes it do afai remember..

fluid skins always has the most fun

tilqicom wrote:

Laibcoms wrote:

I'm not sure if it is possible to put a "minimum" width for the content area itself w/o using JS (I may be wrong, but in CSS3 it is possible).

it is. however ie6 does not understand as always.. ie google code makes it do afai remember..

fluid skins always has the most fun

Ah yes, very true. I really pray MS will push IE8 instead of giving the end-user an option. It'll make all the web designers happy, at least push it for IE6 users if not IE7

*sigh*

#ie_min_width_crap{
display:none;
}

* html #ie_min_width_crap{
display:block;
width:##px;
line-height:1px;
height:1px;
font-size:1px;
}

<div id="ie_min_width_crap">&nbsp;</div>

ish.

¥

yayy.. my new lcd has just arrived.. i am so starting new themes this week.. let me know if you have any 'inspirational' examples of what kind of theme you have in mind

Much of this layout is close to brilliant: http://www.gscottolson.com/weblog/
Try to find what makes it outstanding and design a skin

• Colour combinations
• Lack of distracting items, minimal design
• Details like the textcloud for comments
• Dimensions, especially the relative dimension of one item (title, text, image - header, body, margins) compared to the other
[/list:u] Good luck

An enhanced photoblogging skin, or the addition of better photo handling abilities into any skin as a plugin, would be really sweet.

Personally, I’d love to be able to select a group of photos, upload them, and have them appear as thumbnails in a single post. Not only would it be easier for the blogger, but would also save bandwidth for visitors.

So, it is quick and easy to post something like – “I went to the auto show and think this and that about the cars, and here are 25 shots of what I like the best:” Click on your photos, upload them, and they appear as a table of thumbnails. Click on a thumbnail and the full size image opens up.

Yes – lots of details to work out. Like just where do the larger images open up.

It would be great to be able to determine the size of the thumbnails – like a parameter to create thumbsnails to # pixels high, or # wide, It would be greater than great to have large images resizeable to the viewers screen size.

Just my thoughts – and it this functionality is already out there for B2E, someone please tell me. :-/

- MCC

M_C_C wrote:

An enhanced photoblogging skin ...

double plus plus in bold!

photoblog skin is the one place I'm pretty sure no one has gone yet, so some flexibility in what one can do with a photoblog would be neato.

M_C_C wrote:

An enhanced photoblogging skin, or the addition of better photo handling abilities into any skin as a plugin, would be really sweet.

we should draw ¥åßßå's attention for such a thing..he has been dealing with galleries [url=http://innervisions.org.uk/]in his tacky pad[/url] for a reasonable time.

;)

¥

Yeah I totally like that. Mentioned it to fplanque on the telly one day and he wasn't that into it though because it was more (in his view) aimed towards the casual photo-blogger.

// I'm seeing something weird on the bottom today though. Like bbcode is leaking out under your "share direct link" bit.

Anyway that'd be a cool plugin ... if it isn't one already ;)

It's a plugin, but it's currently being tweaked ;)

I can understand FG's opinion though, I'm still trying to work out the best/intuitive way to include my galleries in my posts ( currently using renderitem() && gallery id ... not gonna last )

¥

¥åßßå – what you are doing in your site with the galleries looks great.

When I’m in a productive mode I need to get 20 – 30 – 40 or so images up and visible at a time. For the last few years I’ve just done this hand coding static HTML thumbnail galleries- which can actually be done fairly quickly, but is still a PITA.

On the blog I pull selected images and then send the user to the static galleries for the rest. If B2E supported the creation of thumbnail galleries, I’d just run my whole site through it.

Anyhow – very cool site you have!

- MCC

Thanks, I like it ;)

I've still not managed to come up with a way of listing/showing galleries that I'm totally happy with. The chances are it'll involve some form of custom/trick skin, but I'm still scratching my head over that.

The galleries are run/maintained by a series of plugins (3), they allow you to select images from your filemanager, edit them ( add title/caption, rotate, crop, resize, flip, drag 'n' drop re-order them ) and then slap them into a post.

You can also include a gallery post into another post using the gallery ID, but that's a tad naff and another thing I need to rethink.

When you view a gallery it auto creates thumbnails and detail sized images based on hard coded settings, which is another thing I need to sort out :P

I'm considering releasing a light version ( basically what I have now without all the image editing stuff ) as it'd be a damn sight easier to do the writeup/readme for it, but that could take a while in itself as I'm in the middle of redoing the js frontend to make it leaner and a damn sight better ( you can take a sneak preview at current state of play here [url=http://innervisions.org.uk/test/]SimpleGallery test[/url], I warn you though, the main images are all larger than 3meg and there isn't currently a "loading" notification so it'll look like it's doing bugger all for ages [ depending on your connection speed ], ohh and the layout's a tad shagged in IE ... but what's new )

¥