Pre-TL;DR:
http://animepapers.org/software/zenphoto/zenpapers/ZenPapers is a minimalistic theme utilizing modern flat design elements. It provides maximum above the fold visibility with a widescreen focus, giving best user retention with the elements in the initial view-port. Anything related to general navigation is seen immediately at the top, while user related navigation elements are below any
viewed content but immediately visible. It is the spiritual successor to StopDesign and inspired by the default theme as well.
ZenPapers is the result of my initial work to update and maintain StopDesign. After reviewing issues / discussions / and commits to the StopDesign theme it seemed best to start over from scratch and bring the code in line with design standards used by modern ZenPhoto releases (as best demonstrated in the latest default theme). The code base is now much simpler (3,244 additions in 28 changed files). A list of the features that drew people to StopDesign and their implementation is below:
ZenPapers currently implements:
1) Wide thumbnails with a sub-album and image count where any album thumbnail is called.
2) Modules for image statistics, image display, and gallery description at the bottom of the index.
3) Previous/Next overlays for the image.php page, as well as thumbnail views of what the previous/next image is.
4) Top Mounted navigation, clearly differentiated from the content.
A major advantage that will be immediately noticeable to anyone using this theme is that the options -> theme section is modifiable in every way from the backend without digging at the code (greater usability). This comes in handy especially when trying to make a decision that wasn't simply doable in StopDesign (i.e. setting whether albums and images should be displayed on the same page, a feature that will be handy when I back-port it to StopDesign).
In doing this, the only major deviations code wise from any other template are a custom thumbnail for the album thumbnail and a call to grab the image.php's image height and width for overlay placement. This theme is simple and clean. I am submitting an initial pull request because it is fully functional now but will continue to improve it going forward. My next step is backporting the clean code to StopDesign but with implementation of all the current StopDesign imagery / coloring for anyone who continues to select that, though I hope they will find this the more pleasing option going forward.
Your feedback is welcomed and appreciated, this is the first release and your feedback helps shape the future of the work.
Thank you,
-Papyrus / APAdmin
Zenphoto
Comments
I opened this forum thread with great excitement of a new, original theme. I see from your screenshots that this is a modification of stopdesign, an included theme.
Anyway, your enthusiasm and analysis of your copy in your description is great, but please see the licensing guides when working with Zenphoto. And since you seem able, maybe contribute something new to the project!
The licensing is actually in line with our guidelines (http://www.zenphoto.org/news/general-contributor-guidelines#themes-and-plugins). GPL v2 or later is bascially a code license only anyway so the design itself can be licensed otherswise like CC licensed (in my country a webdesign in general must be very very unique to fully reach the copyrigth lawthreshold of originality - same applies to standard book layouts btw).
Actually in this case it even must since the Stopdesign design is under already under that license as well. (We could debate if we should have shipped it with the release maybe).
The codebase is a complete overhaul. Stopdesign was a mess that was constantly causing theme specific bugs that took development time to fix and paid no respect to user wishes in the backend, all that is fixed here. Also, it should qualify as a stricter adherent to the doctype for HTML 5 as well. Ironically it is closer to the default theme than StopDesign as I wanted the code to be clean and if I had a question would look at the default theme for proper usage of any calls.
I made no qualms about my inspirations, but with a redesign of all the visual elements, modern functions and design methodology I'd ask that you install it and check it out sometime. Beyond the wide album thumbs it's pretty different.