New version of Candy themelet

The Candy themelet for Morph has had over 100 downloads so far and a new version is now available for download in the club. View demo.

The process for Candy has been a slow one due to it being the first themelet and its development was directly tied to that of Morph and Configurator.

Now that things are more stable and nearing code freeze, the entire process and systems underneath it are nicely refined and setup for us to roll out more frequent themelets.

What has been updated and fixed?

This new version features many many refinements. Most importantly, it is completely stable across all a-grade browsers (excluding IE6 at this stage, which is only graded as a-grade on windows-xp).

1. CROSS BROWSER

To start off, if you are one of those IE6 fans out there, then I have some bad news: you will have to sit tight a little longer as our dear friend has been left for last and we are in the process of finishing it. In the mean time you can enable the built in IE6 upgrade notice from within Configurator to tell browsers it is not working yet.

The first version of Candy was made up of a layer of css & images that sat on top of the original light base themelet. In order to completely get a cross browser version of Candy I had to first cross browser test the light base and then add the Candy layer and images to the new base. Once this was done, merge all the css together. This resulted in something we know you will enjoy using:

Vanilla – the new base themelet

This is a much leaner, cleaner and ultra refined themelet than its predecessor. More importantly, it is stable across all A-Grade browsers. All of the css was revised and re-worked to be primarily cleaner and leaner, as this would in turn make the cross browser process less painful.

All options in Morph, the different menus, layouts, grids, chromes all in their various hundreds of combinations was tirelessly tested for pixel perfect layout in each browser…while consuming dozens of cups of coffee to keep me going. ;)

The result is the perfect platform to start building future themelets ourselves and of course for those of you out there wanting to venture into building your own themelets for Morph. During the process I also included loads of comments throughout the css to help you modifying the themelet for your own use.

After Vanilla was complete, I set out to now re-merge the Candy layer with the new base and then fix up any new bugs that will inevitably have crept in and then do another round of cross browser with Candy. This is now all complete and as I mentioned before, you can get the latest download in the club.

Lets take a look at what else has changed…

2. NEW AUTO SETUP with themelets xml overrides

If you installed the first version of Candy, you will have gone through the process of setting up Configurator’s defaults that Candy needs to work. This entire process is now automated thanks to a new and oh so powerful feature bringing xml overides to themelets.

Themelet developers can now use simple xml parameters in the themelets xml to set and override any settings within Configurator. When the themelet is activated, these new settings are automatically added as the new settings to Configurator. This means there is no manual process to get your themelet working properly.

3. ADDED OPTION for search in {TOP} and {TOOLBAR} positions

If you publish a search module (currently user4 – right of main menu by default) to either top (the right of the logo) or toolbar (the position just below the candy bar) it will automatically be styled to suit its position. For clarification around blocks/positions in Morph, see the interactive demo.

4. ALL AVAILABLE STYLES now on demo

We have added previews for all available module styles on the demo, including all the various font options. See all available styles here.

5. MENU SUBTEXT when using the “topdrop” aka super dropline

You can add subtext to the menu item using the default format of “toptext # bottom text” and then add the suffix “subtext topdrop” to the module.

This only works on first level items, as in the main items. I’m not sure it is practical to add to the second level as it takes a lot of space and does not look so good. If you feel otherwise let me know and I will see what I can do.

What still needs to be done?

• IE6 cross browser fixes
• Typography refinements and set final vertical rhythm
• Some minor asthetic issues that are bugging me (there are always a few)
• Sidefish menu is buggy and needs work

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Tags: Candy, Joomla, Morph, themelets