Some sketches for a potential new template

[TheMarco]

Since Dark Matter Pro has been fairly successful I've been thinking about doing one or two more themes based on the Dark Matter Pro core codebase.

These sketches are just a starting point at the moment to see if something nice comes out.

If this theme ever were to become a reality, it would have the following main features:

1: a small toolbar with buttons for: description, EXIF info and comment which pops up when hovering over the photo and disappear again when you move out.
2: an Apple style 'dock' containing the image browser carousel. It would slide in as you mouse over the bottom of the image and slide back out when the cursor leaves that area.
3: overlay windows for the EXIF info, description and comment form

The theme would support any photo width and 'stretch' to whatever width your photo is, with a sensible minimum width though.

Still working on more ideas. Let me know what you think.

Sketches:

http://flickr.com/photos/i-marco/3181970218/
http://flickr.com/photos/i-marco/3183017085/

[Dennis]

I like the way you're implementing the thumbnail scroller. It really has a nice classic view.

[Scarabaeus]

Very classy, looking forward to it.

[Smartphoner]

Very good go aheaad !

[jpons]

Marco,

This looks very nice. I just relaunched my website with DarkMatter-Pro, albeit somewhat modified.

Check it out: http://wildnaturephoto.com/

As I was implementing, I thought of a few things I would love to see in a next version or a nice temple like this new one.

1. Larger size images, 950px is not enough. I would love to see a theme that would have a number of image sizes and display the largest one that would fit, ideally taking the entire window.

2. Ability to bring up both the carousel and "gallery" as an overlay over the image while darkening the background. Similar to what I am doing now with my Yellowstone Winter Workshop announcement. I am using jquery and thinkbox to do that.

3. Ability to have the identity graphic overlaid the image in a transparent "glass" header bar, similar to what you are doing here with the carousel. The idea again is to have the image take over the entire window and have some very lightweight elements over it.

I have a lot more, but that is it for now.

Thanks,

-J

[jaywilliams]

I think that adding some auto-resize code would really make this template amazing. Then it would pretty much be iPhoto in fullscreen mode for Pixelpost. And even if you don't want to go the multiple scaled JPG files route, most modern browsers, IE7+, FF3+, Safari, Opera, and Chrome, all support smooth, on the fly Javascript image resizing, so that might be an easier route. I've tested, and used this very method to resize images for my Flickr Enlarger (http://enlarger.myd3.com/) site, which seems to be working pretty well.

[TheMarco]

Good suggestions guys. Thanks! I'll keep these in mind.

[imixed]

Marco,

I just wanna be curious about the status of this template. The sketches you presented early Jan were looking really promissing.

Is this still a project you are working on? Any ideas when a first release can be expected?

Cheers,
Mario