Suggestions for future versions
 

Hi all - didn't see a specific thread for this, did I miss it somehow?

Anyway - suggested functionality from a designer-that-doesn't-like-code viewpoint, all regarding the header (except one)... most based on things I've searched for here that seem to be popular requests...

HEADER IMAGES:

To avoid cluttering the interface of user options for those who want a simpler layout, maybe an "advanced header options" tab, that adds:

Flash/SWF header area (would be activated like "logo% image% flash% bar1%" etc) with a height control setting;

Secondary image (Another horizontal image bar that might access images in /images/header2/) stick with me on this...

Then, main image, flash, and secondary header would all have check boxes AND exclude from page-number controls.

My reasoning being that many folks here (and many of my clients, for years now) like a larger flash header on the home page, and either a smaller flash header or a photo/graphics header on the rest of their site.

ADDRESSING GRAPHIC LIMITATIONS IN THE PAGE MENU:

It's really hard to get the page menu "pretty" or make it match a site design...

Maybe this could be done with CSS inserts- but a cool user-panel function would be:
if page title (or page ID) is (xxx) button is (xxx.gif)

as in:

if page title is (home) button art is (home-a.gif)
if page title is (contact-us) button art is (contact-a.gif)

This could be setup so that images could be loaded into a "/nav-images/" folder, and the theme would know that "home-b.gif" is the rollover state, etc.

to make this really swing, you'd also need "page menu height" and "background image" controls...

That could end up being a long list for drop downs with lots of pages, but it would also provide more of a "fixed width" for drop downs.

REGARDING SIDEBARS - this addresses designing sites that "don't look so wordpress" - your theme is a GIANT step in this direction... but I'd LOVE to see something for the CENTER area, where you would choose background image for the center like this:

Background styling for 3 columns: xxx
background styling - pages with no left sidebar: xxx
background styling - pages with no right sidebar: xxx


That may seem silly, but the ability to graphically "cross the boundaries" of the header/center/sidebars system is, as a designer, massive, allowing curved or angled visual divisions, which can all be done with the right backgrounds. It can be done now with your theme (I spent a day playing with it and man, you can REALLY do some cool and functional stuff), but adding the above functionality would allow pages with different column setups to all share the same overall look. It's the kind of thing that I or someone else could do some example images of to show how powerful that could be.


Thanks for a great theme!