With the advent of Ajax and the genius minds of countless programmers, I am hoping that there will soon be a WordPress version that will have a built-in drag and drop theme/layout manager.
The work of Ozh, specifically the WordPress Theme Toolkit has helped theme developers come up with interesting ways to manage sidebars, may they be horizontal or vertical. Kyle Neath used the same toolkit when he made the Hemingway theme.
I have also been browsing several sites that feature WordPress themes and have come up with a handful of themes that use this toolkit.
Anyway, since the tools are there, I wonder if anyone is actually working on a WordPress project that will primarily use this drag and drop functionality.
I am picturing a layout manager that will require the following user input:
1. Number of Columns
2. Choice of vertical or horizontal “sidebar”, or both
3. Header image or text
4. Ordered or unordered lists
5. etc.
And when the above information is set, then the program will show a layout and present the required blocks for the user to drag and drop wherever they want to.
Of course there will be a standard stylesheet in place. Then when everything is set, the artistry and creativity begins when the user will use his imagination on what images to use or other further css styling he/she prefers.
I’m sure this is not a new thing. Back when Geocities started (even before Yahoo acquired it), they already had this web-based application that actually did this sort of drag and drop function. But that was way too limited. MSN Spaces uses the same function and even Netvibes.
Anyway, I’m wishful thinking. But it would be neat if someone actually came up with this for WordPress!
miklb
Said this at 12:14pm:http://www.freshpursuits.com/canvas
May be what you are looking for. Truthfully, I signed up for the beta testing, but thought it was going to be something much different. But it appears the idea is much like what you’ve suggested. There are some online template engines (can’t remember the links) that run you through a series of questions (# of columns, left/right sidebar, etc) and then generate a basic theme from those answers as well.
Don
Said this at 10:06pm:Cool! Let me know how it goes. I checked out the website and it does seem like the one I described.
Adam
Said this at 12:22pm:I think this idea would be great for Content Managment Systems as well. I am building a custom CMS right now becasue my client couldn’t figure out Joomla. Right now I have the page broken up into snippits. Right column, Left Column, ect. as well as tinyMCE to edit each snipit. You can control the sort order for each snipit with numbers, but a drag and drop option would be perfect.
I’m pretty sure ajax is the answer. Im going to try canvas in my blog and see if i can reverse engineer it to what i need
Don
Said this at 12:30pm:I tried Canvas. Not my thing. For one, the boxes do not display very well on Mac (Safari or FireFox).
What I really like is how the WordPress widgets have evolved. You can actually use them and place them either horizontally or vertically, depending on your chosen layout.
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