Liferay Theme development experiences

[Tibi Kiss]

Looking on the available Liferay Themes I feel that it is really missing more nice themes.

I started to create a new one but I couldn't create better. Maybe the problem is that I'm not a designer, but a Java developer.
What do you think, what is the cause that in the available themes only the default one looks like professional?

I'm afraid that developing a portal theme always will suffer from several constraints on the design.

I'm so curious if in the Liferay Portal 5.2 Systems Development book Jonas provide more information regarding theme customization.

I'm interested in everybody else's opinion about my question.

[Cameron Wallace McKenzie]

Welcome, Greenhorn!

I'd even like to ask if there is any portability between Liferay themes and themes of other portal servers. Has there been any standardization in portal themes and portlet skins in the industry?

-Cameron McKenzie

[Tibi Kiss]

I'm also interested in books regarding portal theme developments also from designer perspective.

[Jonas X. Yuan]

Hi Tibi,

Hope that the chapter 9 would help:

* Building themes in Plugins SDK
o Creating a customized theme
+ Setting up the theme project
+ Building differences of themes
o What's happening after deploying themes?
+ Putting HTML to use
+ Experiencing CSS and images
+ Using jQuery JavaScript library
+ Employ theme settings
+ Adding color schemes
+ Adhering to WAP standard
+ Adding runtime portlets to a theme
o Using theme, CSS, and JavaScript
+ Making use of themes
+ Applying CSS
+ Employing JavaScript
+ Experiencing the developing and debugging tools

* Customizing Velocity templates in themes
o Using default Velocity templates
+ Experiencing default Velocity variables
+ Customizing Velocity variables
o Adding customized Velocity templates
+ Using Velocity templates in drop-down menu
+ Using Velocity templates in journal article-based navigation
o Setting up customized themes and layout templates as default

Thanks

-- Jonas Yuan

Books:
Liferay Portal 5.2 Systems Development
Liferay Portal 5.0 Enterprise Intranets

[Tibi Kiss]

Jonas X. Yuan wrote:Hi Tibi,

Hope that the chapter 9 would help:

....
Thanks

-- Jonas Yuan

Hi Jonas,

Thank you very much.
Chapter 9 looks promissing, indeed.

Thanks,
Tibi