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Theme design

Designing themes for Exponential: designs, the override system, styles, assets and accessibility.

130 pages

Designing newsletter emails How theme designers design newsletter mails for Exponential sites that use the CJW Newsletter extension - skins with an HTML and a text part, why mail design follows different rules from the web theme, the four shipped… Theme designers Theme design
Motion and interaction How theme designers specify motion and interaction for an Exponential theme - what motion is for, durations and easing as tokens, reduced motion, carousels and sliders editors fill, disclosures and dialogs, and how… Theme designers Theme design
Designing for performance budgets The design decisions that decide how fast an Exponential theme is - agreeing a budget before drawing, the first screen, fonts, images, third-party embeds, page weight per template, and how a designer checks a page… Theme designers Theme design
Working with developers How theme designers and Exponential developers divide the work on a theme - who owns what, the shared vocabulary, working in the theme's Git repository, requests for fields and settings, reviewing templates against… Theme designers Theme design
Working with clients and reviews How theme designers run design reviews with clients and editors for an Exponential site - what to review at each stage, reviewing on a preview siteaccess with real content, collecting feedback that can be acted on… Theme designers Theme design
Tools for theme designers The tools a theme designer uses with Exponential - the settings that reveal which template drew what, the debug output, packed or unpacked stylesheets, the preview siteaccess, the template editor and the design… Theme designers Theme design
Themes for Exponential Platform A short orientation for theme designers asked to design for Exponential Platform DXP, the Symfony line - Twig instead of TPL, designs as ordered theme lists, the @ibexadesign namespace, templates/themes folders, what… Theme designers Theme design
Building a portfolio and getting work How a theme designer builds a portfolio around Exponential and finds work - portfolio pieces that show content-managed design, open source contributions, publishing a theme, the partner program's creative profile as… Theme designers Theme design
Handoff checklist The checklist of everything a theme designer hands to developers for an Exponential theme - inventory and mapping sheet, tokens with dark values, components with states, view matrix, image and block sheets, special… Theme designers Theme design
Design QA checklist A checklist for theme designers to check a built Exponential theme against the design - on a development or preview siteaccess, page type by page type, in light and dark, at three widths, with real and stress content… Theme designers Theme design
Theme design review checklist A checklist for reviewing a theme design before it is built or before a release - concept, content fit, system consistency, accessibility, multilingual and multi-brand readiness, editor experience, and the project's… Theme designers Theme design
Design extensions How an extension carries a design: the DesignExtensions[] setting, the folder it points to, activating the extension for all or some siteaccesses, and what else a theme extension usually ships. DevelopersDesigners Theme design
Designing the front page How theme designers approach the front page of an Exponential site - the three ways a front page is built (a layout, a class of its own, an override of the root node), how to choose with the client, designing for… Theme designers Theme design
Redesigning an existing site How theme designers redesign a running Exponential site - auditing the current design and its overrides, deciding what to keep, introducing tokens into an old theme, building the new design beside the old one on a… Theme designers Theme design
Theme designer FAQ Short answers to the questions theme designers ask most about Exponential - do I need to write templates, why no inline styles, how dark mode works, why my change does not show, how editors change pages, fonts, images… Theme designers Theme design
Theme designer glossary The terms theme designers meet in this section that the Design glossary does not already define - image alias, view type, layout type, shared layout, remote id, preview siteaccess, skin, ramp, role token, state matrix… Theme designers Theme design
Show your theme as a live static demo Put your Exponential theme in front of clients and users as a live demo site on GitHub Pages, free and always up, with example content and a link to the theme's repository. DesignersTheme designers Theme design
The design directory layout Every folder a design can have, what the kernel and the web server do with each, which folders browsers may fetch directly, and how the media and starter designs of this installation organize their templates. Designers Theme design
Pagelayout variables Every variable the kernel gives the pagelayout ($module_result, $site, $current_user, $access_type, $ui_context and more), the keys of $module_result.content_info for content pages, and examples of using them. Designers Theme design
Choosing a starting theme Whether to start a new design from scratch, from the simple, media or starter theme, or from ezwebin, with the trade-offs of each and a short decision table. Project managersDesigners Theme design

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This documentation is free documentation, licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License 1.3 or later.

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