About
This theme is designed to be a base theme in the style of Zen. Its main goal is to re-write much of the Drupal core CSS to utilize the OOCSS framework that is being developed by Nicole Sullivan. If used correctly, designers and module developers can leverage the modularity of the framework to help reduce the size of their CSS files and to also strengthen the underlying structure of their HTML and CSS.
OOCSS can also act as a bridge for both front-end and back-end designers. Since OOCSS can be described using languages such as UML, there is some common ground that back-end and front-end teams can share.
The end result should be more well-designed, faster, and more flexible themes for Drupal.
Design Goals
This theme will remain lean to allow designers to easily create sub-themes based on it. In fact, I anticipate that the page.tpl.php file will be just a suggestion of how a theme can use OOCSS and an easy jumping off point for designers to start with. The real power of the theme will be done in it's template.php file, which will override many (if not all) of the core theme functions and templates in Drupal in order to use the OOCSS framework.
Contrib modules will need to be overridden by the designers. I am initially targeting Drupal core as I believe that is going to be a lot of work. In the future I would hope to have support for common modules such as CCK and Views built into the template.php file.
While the theme should remain lean, that doesn't mean that it should be ugly. Once the HTML structure has been taken care of, the base theme will be designed using some of the pre-made OOCSS module skins. This will keep this project more inline with the OOCSS' philosophy.
Helping Out
I am very open to help with this project. I have done web-design for many years, but I'm most experienced with PHP. So, having some input on the CSS/HTML from another perspective would be invaluable. If you would like to help develop and maintain this project, please contact me on Drupal. Consult the README.txt file for more ways to contact me, including Twitter and E-mail.
Installing
Please refer to the INSTALL.txt file for more instructions. Also note that development is currently ongoing and changes are being made often. There is no scheduled release date for a stable release.
