I am releasing six themes today (V1.5), available here. These have been mapped from their earlier accessorized versions for inclusion instead within the cp-themes folder, per 2.1.3’s theming cascade enhancement:
Bluevelvet-Min
Greenvalley (screenshot attached)
Redriver
Redriver-Defaulted
Roundmidnight
Roundmidnight-Rainbow (screenshot attached)
Note that I have not reengineered the control panel itself. Also, though I do include some custom icons, most of the icons retain the ‘classic’ appearance of the now-famous Default theme.
However, these themes, while built on the foundation of the original Default theme, touch nearly every aspect of the CP. In that sense, they are not ‘skins’, but full themes in the spirit of ‘corporate’ and ‘fruit’.
I may soon release (but have not yet polished) a theming ‘engine’ that I use to build themes. Though I do not use tools like Less for this project, my process is not dissimilar:
1. I first rationalized the Default theme by making color and style usage more consistent within the CSS code.
2. Elements which appear in multiple places within the control panel were parameterized within the CSS source file.
3. Each theme specifies values for the variables created in 2. As few as four values define a ‘minimal’ theme such as Bluevelvet-Min; as many as sixty may be tweaked separately to cover more complex themes.
4. Once fully specified per 3 above, the global.css file is generated automatically.
Consequently, a new theme may be created in a half-hour or less, depending almost entirely on the color/style balancing complexity sought by the theme designer. In practice, even complex themes rarely require specification of more than twenty or so distinct values.
I have also included a number of font file accessories:
Coloborate
Droid Sans
Fontin
Museo ……. These above for use within an entire theme
Droid Sans Mono
Anonymous Pro
Vera Sans …. These above for use within the template editor
Fonts blend …. Combines Museo and Fontin appropriately for theme use.
You may choose from among these fonts (activating them as Accessories) to further customize theme appearance.
A final note: I have been updating these themes since the beta version of 2.0. It has taken me between fifteen minutes and several hours to bring them up-to-date between EE versions; the longest time required was for 2.1.3. This time is not per-theme, but for all themes, since they may be regenerated together from the same base CSS file. Actually, the themes have executed without nasty consequences in each of the enhanced versions/build of 2.X before I upgraded the theme code to match closely EllisLab CSS upgrades.
I have tested the themes extensively in the past across many browsers; not as extensively this time due to the press of other responsibilities. However, I believe they will work nicely on multiple platforms/browsers. Please let me know of any problems you encounter.
Enjoy.