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The Future of Themeing?
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- James L Helms
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 57
- Thanks: 0
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Ok, so here is my question to the Rocket Theme community!
What is the future of Joomla and Theme/Template capabilities? I ask this because it seems that designs are becoming repetitive with few changes and few new features. Don't get me wrong I know there is a lot that goes into each theme, from design, to code, to implementation.
I don't mean to critisize or bash anyones process or creativity this is absolutely not the reason for this but possibly to spark new thoughts and add additional ideas to Joomla Users and Developers. I love Joomla and I am serious about this, I bought it a wedding ring and it turned me down the sorry whore! But seriously when I design I have a LOT of clients want Flash based designs and lots of functionality. Only recently the last (1 - year) or so MooTools has shed some light on these features with Joomla and before that there was not much else.
I know this is ridiculous but I often times dig up inspiration from this site: templatemonster.com because the flash and functions are almost insane. My question, are these things possible with Joomla? Or do you see it going that far? Would anyone like this? Trust me I have used flash and can piddle with it a bit but am by no means an advanced user but I do have some experience and know its not for the faint of heart. Is there another option to bring this type of design to Joomla?
What are all of your thoughts and ideas?
James
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- James Spencer
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 46340
- Thanks: 50
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The limitations all revolve around Joomla 1.0, once its dropped from the world and 1.5 is the main platform for theming, you can expect to see a lot more advanced features.
There is only so much you can do with 1.0, 1.5 opens a lot more doors
- James Spencer / Developer & Support / Hull, UK
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- James L Helms
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 57
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What kind of features do you expect to start seeing in the future for Joomla 1.5.X?
Is there a certain Javascript you see coming into play in the future aside from MooTools? Do you know if any of the theme providers have been experimenting with these new ideas?
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- James Spencer
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 46340
- Thanks: 50
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Its impossible for me to really say but the 1.0 platform is quite limiting, so with a more rich framework to work with, the more you can do. Obviously, I cannot say what features you can expect as that is something only the future will be able to tell.
As for flash, I have outlined by views on it in this thread www.rockettheme.com/forum/index.php?t=37..._v=viewtopic#p216944 - James Spencer / Developer & Support / Hull, UK
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- James L Helms
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 57
- Thanks: 0
- Unfortunately I can't check that post because my subscription expired a couple of months back but I have been considering renuing it... just haven't seen many advances in template production. Really looking for something intreging and professional looking. Most of my clients are professional business and don't want the real vibrant colors... they need dark colors, simple menus and most of them like to have just a simple 5 - 10 page site describing their company, services and products........... however they ALL like the flash.
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- Andy Miller
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 9919
- Thanks: 96
- Web Kahuna
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To be honest, if you are serving up simple 5 to 10 page sites for clients who like flash, you probably should just use flash In that case you are going to need to learn flash to make any modifications, and expect those to be extensive and very time consuming compared to making minor image/css edits to a joomla theme.
However, you can get a lot of flash-like functionality from javascript these days, and that's what we try to provide with our mootools powered modules and elements. A cms, and consequently a theme for a cms, like the ones we provide are much more flexible and more configurable than any flash template you are going to find (or joomla template for that matter) from the likes of TemplateMonster. Those templates look good in demos, but you can't change them without seriously breaking them.
Any of our templates, especially those produced in the last year or so, are EXTREMELY flexible, in layout, functionality and design. You can easily change any of them to be business like by just editing some images and css. If the template doesn't come with the exact style you are looking for, make your own! It's not hard, your a web developer right? Don't be put of by the fact that it's a template, it's made to be edited and customized to your own needs.
Good luck!
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- James L Helms
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 57
- Thanks: 0
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No, I completely understand.
I have been using Joomla for about 3 years so I know how it works and what to expect. And I can do most anything with photoshop and fireworks for graphics but like here: www.templatemonster.com/flash-templates/21185.html
See how the page loads and all, these are things my clients like to see. But Joomla just can't do that right now which is not a bad thing but is bad for me and I am sure others who LOVE Joomla. And as for my clients using Flash based sites it works and is fine but most of my clients want a solution that they can edit and control more easily than having to higher me or someone else to make changes to flash everytime they turn around. This gets expensive and time consuming and well its just not very user friendly.
The end questions here is will MooTools ever offer the ability to do things like the link above? Is there another Javascript that may offer this functionality?
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- prim
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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It seems like your clients likes "bling bling" but anyway, i think you should see it from another angle. The enduser/customer and the admin doesn't like flash in general. The enduser likes fast-loading sites and it should be easy to navigate, copy text and easy to link to a specific page. Try linking to a specific article on a flash site and tell me how easy it is. I am sure it is possible to do this in flash but the average webdesigner doesn't know how to...
I checked the link you posted and found several "sins"...
1. Never use sounds on a main page unless the user asked for it.
2. Hard to find the mute button.
3. Unable to copy text or link to a specific text/article. (can be fixed within flash...)
4. No search function.
I could go on but i don't have time
- Please reply with a direct link to the issue & create a new thread for each new issue.
A template is only as good as the content that goes into it
- DanG
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- James L Helms
- Rocketeer
- Posts: 57
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That link was really just a demo to show some of the flash functions that some of my clients enjoy. They always vary but its pretty neat stuff. Integrating flash into Joomla is not very difficult really but when you get into the entire page making changes and the flash loading your content it gets pretty tidious.
I agree that some of the items you described are not very doable but the idea behind this post was more about the flash rather than the search, or music. More specifically how the page is able to load content without actually changing the header/footer but only the content itself and the way it slides out and then back in... just some cool stuff.
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