Preview: LeBlanc themelet for Morph Joomla template framework
LeBlanc is a clean, minimalist style themelet with a strong focus on simplicity. Lots of white space and typographical details make this the perfect start for any professional, personal or company blog and portfolio.
This themelet was specifically built to show off as many of the Joomla pages and content layouts as possible as well as plugins available in the Joomla core.
For more information about the Morph toolset and if it’s right for your Joomla website development, visit www.joomlajunkie.com.
Re-written code for ultimate perfection
We have spent immense time re-writing every possible part of Joomla’s html output using a more semantic and meaningful markup.
This new structure has allowed us to fine tune the look of all Joomla’s pages and elements throughout, making them look a lot more professional and robust than before. Take a look for yourself, ever seen a Joomla signup form or password reminder look this sexy? ;)
Easy to customize
You can easily change the entire color scheme, or add a new grungy background, your own logo text, and literally hundreds more options without even touching any code at all.
Check out the images below of what can be achieved with no more than a few clicks and uploading some images using the Configurator interface.
Default style - green
Grunge style 1 - blue
Grunge style 1 - orange
Grunge style 2 - red
That’s all for now folks. I hope you enjoyed the screenshots and are looking forward to the release. If this is a themelet style you like, or not, let us know in the comments below. :)
UPDATE : LeBlanc now available for download – This themelet, with the sample content and all modules (excluding images), is now available as part of our all new Rapid setup process. You can get your Joomla site up and running, with the Morph framework, this themelet and all demo content exactly as you see it in under 5 minutes and within just a few clicks. DOWNLOAD | VIEW DEMO | GET SUPPORT (Are you running the latest version of Morph, Configurator and themelets? If not, download it all here!)
Tags: Design, Joomla, Le Blanc, Morph, themelets
Is this source-ordered?
Hi Mitch,
Since the Morph framework is the base, yes. :)
It’s actually a good question so we might do a separate blog post about the different optimization techniques in Morph…
I’ll let Chris, Andrew and/or Byron pitch in on this topic here in the comments as well.
Cheers,
Tess
Awesome Tess – looking forward to seeing more on how Morph is optimized.
Many folks immediately equate “template framework” with bloat and frilly features. Would be very valuable to everyone to see how Morph is blazing a different trail in that regard.
Keep up the good work, I’m totally impressed!
absolutely!! through all 250+ layout options, the columns will always remain source ordered… that’s the beauty of it all ;)
As for the performance, LeBlanc will definitely show off the speediness of Morph. We have not pushed the performace side much yet, but we are going to soon. Morph is comparable to all of the free templates out there claiming to be so fast.
Leblanc for example weighs in with all of the content and images you see on the preview / demo (coming soon) at under 200kb and loads near instantly. (this is lighter than bolt, and breeze and most others but still more image and content rich)
For interest sake, take a look at this tweet, I posted a while ago of some basic stats of the Morph framework on its own without a themelet… just the core framework running with structural css and all javascript.
Let me know if there is something specific you want to know and I can clarify further.
Thanks for your feedback :)
Guys this is looking lovely. Totally up for the simple approach (less is more). Looking forward to giving it a try.
Hi Tim,
Thanks for the feedback, glad you like the more simple approach. If it is popular, we will do more of this type of themelet.
Not only its a beauty, but looks like this really hit the request I made in the forum! Man you guys rock! Me liking LeBlanc!
Thanks Prothemer team!
Already left a tweet with my compliments for Vanilla. Now LeBlanc appears. :)
I want to become a member, but there’s one thing I need to know about Morph. Am I able to easily change the menu appearance – space, color, font, etc in the css, for example? Same for module appearance? Because to really change the appearance, these things are important, but can’t be set in the configurator.
Thanks,
Tom
Hi Tom,
Vanilla and Leblanc are themelets for the Morph framework. Its important to know that themelets contain all of the visual images and css that make up the themelet. All the visual css for menus, modules, typography etc is contained in the themelet. In Morph, we have separated the structure from visual and this is what makes it easy to customize as you need. Configurator is the component that allows you to do 2 main important things.
1. To set basic customization for important elements such as the logo, footer, heading colors etc
2. Modify the layout and structure of the html to vastly change appearance. Each themelet has a different set of default settings that along with the themelets css is what makes each themelet look different.
To make it clearer, I will tell you that LeBlanc was actually built using Vanilla as the base. Although it looks completely different, this is from only changing the default settings in Configurator and different CSS and images in the themelet.
The separation of structure and visual code (morph is the structure and the themelet is the visual) was done in a way that would make Morph as flexible as possible by using only CSS. The concept was largely inspired by CSS Zen Garden, to be able to achieve drastically different concepts with mostly css and images. This is in essence what a themelet is… they are different concepts, or implementations. The only thing that makes themelets different is their CSS, images and default Morph configuration.
Obviously CSS alone is not able to do everything, such as move divs around the page and add markup etc, and this is where the Configurator component comes in. It is the interface that can be used to carry out a large variety of tasks that we as experienced template developers built into Morph as we felt they were needed to get the extra control that CSS alone is not able to do. With the main focus of being able to suite nearly any possible required layout. Not only that, we wanted to make it possible for less experienced users who dont know CSS to able to do things like change colors and logo text, images etc.
The difficult thing about marketing Morph is the target users, it seems some people think Morph only allows you to change some basic things via the Configurator interface, which may seem limiting. On the other hand people think it needs to all be done with CSS and you need coding skills. The truth is that it caters for both, we really tried to cover both ends of the market.
If you are new to Joomla, you can use one of our themelets as a base if you like the concept as it is, or use the Vanilla base to completely change and build your own concept. The idea is the more you know about the technologies, the more you can do.
A long answer I know, but I hope I managed to make things a little clearer for you.
Cheers,
Andy
Hi Andy,
Thanks a lot for your clear explanation! As an experienced developer, my worries were that I would have to go through difficult to adjust code files, if everything was written to accomodate the Configurator, only leaving cryptic code to find. :)
I am very aware of the advantages of Morph. It solves many problems that Joomla came with, expecially module positioning. But of course, wanting to design original websites, it is important to be able to modify all aspects of a website.
For example: Vanilla is a great Themelet, but I would want to modify it to add some color. Then I would have to edit the menu css, some module css, etc. And perhaps modify the speces between modules. These things aren’t possible using the Configurator. So that’s why I wondered. But you just answered my question. All css is in the themelet css, that’s nice and easy. :)
I guess you’ll have a new member now :)
Thanks!
Tom
Thanks for explaining your thinking behind what was unclear for you about Morph. This helps us to know what we need to talk about etc.
One last thing I’d like to mention is that Morph for us is not just a product, its a way… its a way we believe is much faster and easier to build Joomla templates. The current problem is we are the only ones who really know the true power behind Morph and we are in the process of documenting everything as much as possible, although this takes time along with creating new themelets and updating solidifying the core framework etc.
That said though, Morph being a framework, does free up a fair amount of our time that we dedicate back to help and teach our members the “way” through our forum. We believe Morph will suit any project requirements in terms of layout and functionality without having to adjust the core. Because this is a new approach, it does require some thinking and understanding of Morph’s structure and developer features but once learned can be used every time over and over to save you time. If you get stuck using Morph and have a goal in mind, all you need to do is express that with us on the Forum and we will be certain to help you in any way we can to achieve your goal.
What Joomla does for building websites, Morph does for building templates.
[quote]Stay tuned for more info shortly![/quote]
How short is shortly?
a bit late r today???????????????????
waiting :))))
hurry up!!!!!!!!!
It’s already available for download you know :)
Cheers,
Tom
Hi guys!
Tom is right, LeBlanc has been released, but we just haven’t posted a separate blog post about it yet.
I’ve updated this post with the info so long, so take a look above for links to download, demo and support. :)
Happy Morphing!
- Tess
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