The advice here is accurate: avoid messing with those helper files too much or you'll be in for some pain later. You can selectively re-declare some of their functions in your themehooks file to override but tread lightly here.
We agree Panel sucks and will scrap it in the next theme overhaul.
The next overhaul must be backwards-compatible, so we need to add some parent-child theme ability to prevent breaking all existing themes.
Internally, we use Smarty exhaustively for client themes. It is invaluable to us. I think writing 1 theme vs 50 themes would give you a very different perspective.
@Bleistivt I am speaking in html terms because those are more concrete. I am thinking about how I want it to look. And I only mention the HTML because without a minimum of this html structure I cannot get done what I want in a responsive design.
The deeper I get into this the more I wish that there were individual template files for the pieces of the page. IE - Discussion page which includes header and then individual discussion item that is repeated down the page.
@Linc Do you have some examples of some pretty robust smarty client themes? I'd love to poke through some of them to see how you guys go about it.
@yourfavorite said:
Bleistivt I am speaking in html terms because those are more concrete. I am thinking about how I want it to look. And I only mention the HTML because without a minimum of this html structure I cannot get done what I want in a responsive design.
The deeper I get into this the more I wish that there were individual template files for the pieces of the page. IE - Discussion page which includes header and then individual discussion item that is repeated down the page.
Linc Do you have some examples of some pretty robust smarty client themes? I'd love to poke through some of them to see how you guys go about it.
Couldn't agree with you more, I design & build premium themes for a living for a range of forum/message board softwares, and Vanilla is something we had to provide a service for once. Unfortunately, due to the inconsistent templating, lack of freedom, and enological process of certain areas, after we finished our client's theme, we now refuse to do custom Vanilla Themes.
Your thought on using individual template files for each piece of the page would be a perfect solution, this would attract so many more high-profile themers out there, just like other softwares do. However every time I see a discussion where people criticise the templating, everybody gets defensive around here.
Comments
Just to give the staff commentary:
At least one Smarty theme in the OS package wouldn't let Smarty look so superfluous
@Bleistivt I am speaking in html terms because those are more concrete. I am thinking about how I want it to look. And I only mention the HTML because without a minimum of this html structure I cannot get done what I want in a responsive design.
The deeper I get into this the more I wish that there were individual template files for the pieces of the page. IE - Discussion page which includes header and then individual discussion item that is repeated down the page.
@Linc Do you have some examples of some pretty robust smarty client themes? I'd love to poke through some of them to see how you guys go about it.
Couldn't agree with you more, I design & build premium themes for a living for a range of forum/message board softwares, and Vanilla is something we had to provide a service for once. Unfortunately, due to the inconsistent templating, lack of freedom, and enological process of certain areas, after we finished our client's theme, we now refuse to do custom Vanilla Themes.
Your thought on using individual template files for each piece of the page would be a perfect solution, this would attract so many more high-profile themers out there, just like other softwares do. However every time I see a discussion where people criticise the templating, everybody gets defensive around here.