Posted on February 26, 2008 // Short URL

John Albin Wilkins and the Zen Theme

Jeff Robbins interview John Wilkins about the Zen theme and the other work he's done with Drupal.

Podcast:

Drupalize.Me Podcast

Tags:

theming, interview, themes, podcast, zen

Comments

Ray Smith

Sun and Palm trees in Melbourne

Hi guys,

Yes, there are a few palm trees in Melbourne ... but don't expect to see too much sun especially in April!
Melbourne is known to have terrible weather! It isn't the "sun and sand" part of Australia ;)

Ray Smith

Reply

caito

Four seasons in one day

Aw cmon Ray - it could easily be 30 degrees in April in Melbourne, sunny, nice.

But then I suppose later in the day, it could be 4 degrees, sleet and rain...

People say in Melbourne, if you don't like the weather, just wait a couple of hours!

I'm sure we're going to put on a good show for the 'Bots, tho. :)

Reply

Ray Smith

I agree Caito

Hehe,
I agree with everything you say Caito.
I just made a little comment as most people not from oz think of scorching hot deserts!
If you're visitng Melbourne in April it would be advisable to pack some warm clothes ;)

I'd love to be able to attend the Lullabot training sessions (and the other Drupal events in Melb.) ... but a week out of my schedule will be difficult to fit it at this stage ... I'm still hoping and would love to hang out with the bots and other Drupal geeks ;)

Reply

lefnire

zengine obsolete?

so is zengine then replaced by the zen theme? if not, what are the differences and when would you use one over the other?

Reply

jeff

Game of Leapfrog

The short answer is "use Zen". In the past, the projects have tended to leapfrog one another, but generally tried to stay in sync with similar features. They are both VERY similar, but right now Zen is in the lead by about 4 months and I think I may throw in the towel for Zengine and not upgrade it to Drupal 6. Currently, all of the major features of Zengine are included in Zen, so there's really not a reason to use it.

The only advantage in Drupal 5 is that Zengine themes can live on the top level and they're easier to find/maintain for developers coming in to a project. (Zen themes *in Drupal 5* have to live in a subdirectory of Zen.) However, with Drupal 6 this has all changed and Zen-based themes can live anywhere.

Go with Zen. It's documented!

Reply

guardian

seems that zen is more an engine than a theme right now

from what i saw in the last release of zen, everything now happens in sub themes

you take STARTERKIT, you clone it, you rename some files and functions, you copy files from the parent zen directory and voila

you are no more supposed to alter zen files and as a consequence i now see zen like the drupal themer pack that once started to live

at first, i thought sub-themes were only a way to create a different version of a master theme by tweaking only small parts of it, which is what css zen garden illustrates by tweaking the css

i didn't understand the efforts zen puts into allowing sub-themes to be like "normal" themes: have their own template.php, have their own .tpl.php files, have their own theme-settings.php etc

as you confirm in the podcast it is a way to allow "more customizations", by moving the one level up: not only you tweak at the css level, but you can also alter some bits of php

right now, "the theme part of zen" as been moved to "zen/zen_classic"
and what's now inside the "zen/" directory is kind of a mix of a skeleton theme (a good practices recipe on how to do it the modern/standard way while fixing some browsers (IE) quirks) and a theme engine

to sum it up, i can see the value in zen: it breaks css into semantically different files, it teaches good practices, it's hella well documented etc. but i also fail to see the difference between

  1. pretend sub-themes don't exist, copy the zen folder into another directory, rename the files and php functions, start customizing
  2. rename the zen/STARTERKIT directory into zen/foo, rename the files and php functions, copy even more files from the upper "zen" folder depending on what you want to customize (php/css cascading), start customizing

i would definitely have more interests in sub-themes if we had a system/engine that would allow us to specify a "master theme" we are allowed to customize (currently the files in the zen folder kinda consist in this "master theme" but you're not allowed/supposed to alter it) and then sub-themes depending on it --> as a consequence, the "master customized theme" would enable us to centralize common customizations instead of copy pasting them from sub-theme to sub-theme

even an other way of customizing would consist in being able to override only a small part of page.tpl.php or node.tpl.php instead of being obliged to copy/paste the whole file

i wrote all of this while listening, and at the end jjeff seems to share the same questions about zen being more an engine that outputs default markup done the good way (tm) than a theme because indeed it's a theme you have in your list but you don't use it

maybe i'm asking myself too much questions and instead of wondering about all this i should have coded my theme (or sub-theme ?) :)

now i guess i want to hear your opinion / enlightenments :)

thanks for the podcast, the theme and everything

Reply

Patrick Harris

Interesting questions ...

I've been wondering too, whether to just rename zen and hack away, or go the sub-theme route.

Reply

Alice

Do you have transcripts of

Do you have transcripts of your podcasts? I would like to learn more about Zen, but I don't care about Drupal con, training, etc. and find it difficult to get past the chatty bits of the podcasts to the content without missing things.

Reply

AlanF

I agree

I agree, though I'd be satisfied with a list of time markers (e.g., "00:01: Intro; 02:40: Discussion of upcoming Lullabot events; 08:10: main topic, part 1; 15:15: main topic, part 2" -- note that I made up those times!). That would be pretty quick for the editor to write and post with the podcast.

Reply

DRB

Finding the Zen Content

To be honest...this podcast is painful to listen to if your intent is to learn about the Zen theme.
10:45 Interview begins
28:52 Zen related content begins
32:10 Zen History & Why Zen?
35:14 (sorry, at this point someone else will need to continue this table of contents)

Reply

Anonymous

Boring laughs

I gave up after 5 min. I came here to learn about Zen... quickly !
I'm not sure I'll try lullabot podcasts a third time ...

Reply

tino

Great stuff, keep em comming

I think there's no harm in adding some humor in process of learning.
People tend to study better if content is amusing,
For people who like to sit in the first row, there is plenty of written documentation.

Reply

Anonymous

Do you have transcripts of

Do you have transcripts of your podcasts? I would like to learn more about Zen, but I don't care about Drupal con, training, etc. and find it difficult to get past the chatty bits of the podcasts to the content without missing things.

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Reply

Sam

Drupal podcast

Heh, so drupal's going down the podcast line now too? Not sure what to say about it, never quite understood the concept.

Reply

Gyln

Sound Quite Interesting

I struggled to engage with podcast at first however some your events do sound quite interesting - I will be keeping a close eye on these...

Fat Face

Reply

Rex Vane

Documentation is Ace

One thing mentioned in the podcast is that the documentation is excellent. So often this is overlooked by busy developers but the Zen docs are particularly good. Setting a fine example.
Guitars

Reply

anders

My latest Drupal-based website

My latest Drupal-based website is going to be based on the Zen theme. What a joy! If only I had discovered it earlier. Really simplifies things and makes the theme come to life quicker. At least for now it is (1st day of serious development work). So if you're clicking around finding a Drupal 5.x theme, might as well try Zen first.
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Reply

Anonymous

I think there's no harm in

I think there's no harm in adding some humor in process of learning.
People tend to study better if content is amusing,
For people who like to sit in the first row, there is plenty of written documentation.
tickets depeche mode

Reply

Anonymous

I think there's no harm in

I think there's no harm in adding some humor in process of learning.
People tend to study better if content is amusing,
For people who like to sit in the first row, there is plenty of written documentation.
tickets depeche mode

Reply