Typed.com "Theme Preview" Mac App Beta Available!

[dan (Dan C.)]

UPDATE: New Build Available!
04/12/2015 — Theme Preview 1.0 (15): https://dl.devmate.com/com.realmacsoftware.typedthemes/ThemePreview.zip
27/11/2015 — Theme Preview 1.0 (10): [Link Removed]

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Hey Guys,

We’re making good progress with the theme platform for typed.com, and I wanted to share it with you guys first as you’ve supported RapidWeaver for the longest time, and I appreciate it

So, if you’re interested in building themes for Typed.com I’ve included everything you’ll need to get started:

Theme Documentation: https://www.typed.com/docs/themes/latest
Starter Theme: GitHub - realmacsoftware/typed-themes: Open source themes for Typed
Mac App: Theme Preview 1.0 (15)

1. Download the Starter Theme.
2. Download Mac App.
3. Open Mac App and drop the “theme” folder into the dropwell in the app.
4. It should automatically start the server, you can then just hit the “Preview” button in the toolbar and it’ll open your browser to display the theme (I’m currently working on one for Rhubarb & Beans)!

Go ahead and edit the css and html in your favourite editor to get the theme looking how you want, just refresh the browser to see the changes (no need to restart the server).

Be sure to check out the theme documentation, it’s pretty amazing.

The only downside is that you can’t upload the themes to typed.com just yet. Uploading themes to the service should be available sometime next week!

In the meantime if you have any questions please let me know.

Thanks,
Dan

[instacks (Jannis from inStacks Software)]

Hi Dan,

played half an hour with it, looks good and works

Please check the link to http://127.0.0.1:8000/tags/review in the metadata below the post title heading

October 26, 2015 12:00 in Review

This one cannot be resolved, I am getting an exception from the django framework.

Cheers, Jannis

Environment:

Request Method: GET
Request URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000/tags/review

Django Version: 1.8.4
Python Version: 2.7.10
Installed Applications:
[‘core’, ‘errors’, ‘home’, ‘pages’, ‘posts’, ‘tags’]
Installed Middleware:
[‘django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware’,
‘django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware’,
‘django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware’,
‘core.middleware.nocache.NoCache’]

Traceback:
File “/Applications/Theme Preview.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Packages/django/core/handlers/base.py” in get_response
132. response = wrapped_callback(request, *callback_args, **callback_kwargs)
File “/Applications/Theme Preview.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Packages/django/views/generic/base.py” in view
71. return self.dispatch(request, *args, **kwargs)
File “/Applications/Theme Preview.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Packages/django/views/generic/base.py” in dispatch
89. return handler(request, *args, **kwargs)
File “/Applications/Theme Preview.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Packages/django/views/generic/base.py” in get
158. context = self.get_context_data(**kwargs)
File “/Applications/Theme Preview.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Packages/typed_sites_local/tags/views.py” in get_context_data
8. return ThemeLoader().get_context_data(ThemeLoader.VIEW_KEY_POSTS_LIST, tags=True)
File “/Applications/Theme Preview.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Packages/typed_sites_local/themes/loader.py” in get_context_data
33. return getattr(self, method_name)(self, *args, **kwargs)
File “/Applications/Theme Preview.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Packages/typed_sites_local/themes/loader.py” in _context_data_posts_list
213. context[‘pagination’] = self._pagination(kwargs[‘page’])

Exception Type: KeyError at /tags/review
Exception Value: ‘page’


[dan (Dan C.)]

Thanks Jannis,

All fixed, here’s a new build…

Theme Preview 1.0 (10): http://downloads.dancounsell.link/1lbzm

Let me know if you hit any other issues.

Cheers,
Dan

[Elixir (Adam Shiver)]

I’ve given it a go with both Preview 9 and 10 and get this each time I try to View Site in the Theme Preview app: http://d.pr/i/1dQNC

[jamesbeith]

This will be because you’re theme is missing the posts-list.html template.

Best thing to do to get started is download/clone a copy of our typed-themes repo. Then drag and drop the starter folder (i.e. theme) on to the app and go from there.

Hope that helps.

[Elixir (Adam Shiver)]

I was mistakenly dragging in the whole folder from the link Dan posted, not realizing it needed the Starter folder within the folder that was linked to. My bad. All better now.

Will try to start mocking up a fun theme idea soon and see how coding on it goes.

[jamesbeith]

Ah I see. We’ll be including more of our own theme in that repo in good time.

Feedback and questions welcome on how you get on with developing themes locally. If all goes to plan we should be opening up theme uploading to a select group of beta testers sometime in December.

[Elixir (Adam Shiver)]

I’m assuming that for now themes are meant to be pretty simple and straight-forward. Since there are not currently any developer definable options, like with RW’s theme variations, we should stay away from things like banner images because there is not a way for the user to customize things like this in the admin panel in Typed, right?

[jamesbeith]

Yes that’s correct, for now at least until we extend things further after our initial launch.

[dan (Dan C.)]

@Elixir James has just got theme uploading working! If you’re working on a theme for Typed.com and would like to upload it let us know and James will enable theme uploading on your account!

Psst. I’d also be interested in seeing the theme too

Cheers,
Dan

[instacks (Jannis from inStacks Software)]

Me✌️. I guess first upload ready tomorrow evening.

Any upload size restrictions? E.g. below 1 Mb?

[Elixir (Adam Shiver)]

I would totally love to try out the theme uploading. Starting work on a theme right now. Will share it with you when it is in a workable condition. Will likely be using today to just experiment with the SDK and such.

[jamesbeith]

@instacks @Elixir and anyone else who’d like to join the beta testing group of theme uploading, please drop me an email to james@realmacsoftware.com and include the email address you use to sign in to your Typed account.

@instacks No size restrictions in place at the moment.

[instacks (Jannis from inStacks Software)]

One question regarding the zip file:

Does e.g. the “starter” folder needs to be included in the zip as root, or should the root be the content (e.g. post-list.html etc.)?

[dan (Dan C.)]

Just compress the “starter” theme folder for example, like this:

[instacks (Jannis from inStacks Software)]

But the starter folder is in your case included in the zip

[dan (Dan C.)]

just zip up the folder you theme files are in, like in the screenshot.

[jamesbeith]

Do as Dan describes above to ZIP up your theme, the uploader will hunt out your theme.json file within and the theme files surrounding it.

[Elixir (Adam Shiver)]

Just a few things that I’m running into as I work through a first simple theme. My guess is that some of this is likely in the works, but I’d rather suggest them than not and it be something that is overlooked:

Navigation
For the navigation – it could use some classes to help in styling it. The active page doesn’t seem to get any sort of indicator. Perhaps just a class of active to allow the theme to style the current page the visitor is on in the navigation.

I’m not sure if you plan on nested pages eventually, but in that case parent and ancestor would be good additions as well. If you do plan on nested pages a breadcrumb of some type might be good, too.

Banners
I’m sure this will be a question by users wanting to style things without digging into code – “How can I add a banner to my page?” Maybe just a simple file upload in the General settings that would allow a JPG to be uploaded for a site-wide banner image that the theme could access through a template variable?

Post List Count
I don’t currently see anywhere that either the user, or the developer can choose how many posts are to be shown per-page on the Post List page. Would probably be best to allow the user to choose I would think.

Next and Prev Post data
It would be nice to allow the theme to know what the next post and previous post are in the blog when on the Post view page. This way you could link to them from the bottom of a Post page for instance, allowing the visitor another way to navigate the site. Giving the theme the URL, Title and maybe an Image related to the post (see next topic) would be great.

Post Banners
Would be interesting to have banner or promo images related to each post. Images can be inserted into posts, but having an image related to the post for things like displaying on the Post List view would be nice. Could add visual interest to the Post View page, and could also be used on the Post page as well.

Other Page Types
I know additional page types besides a blog and markdown page are probably down the line in a v1.5 or 2.0 or something, but some more page types would definitely be useful in making Typed heartier.

That being said though – if the theme could have a way of creating page types this would be interesting too. An example would be Statamic. They use a YAML file to create a fieldset file. This adds the ability to populate the backend with specific fields which relate to variables that can be accessed through the theme. I could expand on this if you need me to. This would be a v2.0 or v3.0 feature for sure. It would be a huge leap forward.

That’s all for now…
I’m sure I’ll have more things that pop up and will try to post them here. These are just things that popped to mind when I was working on a theme. Not critiques of Typed itself. It is actually pretty versatile so far for having a limited feature set right now. Liking it a lot. The SDK is nice and straight-forward so far, too.