So I spent the better part of the week reworking the CSS files for Makahiki. As mentioned last week, the PM wanted us to factor out all of the relevant portions of CSS that affect the theme of the site. The catch is that the files have to be able to support the old version of the site, as well as our newly proposed theme. This doesn't leave a lot of room for design.
I got it done, but I'm not happy with the way the theme turned out (too many restrictions to realize my vision). I'm also a bit hesitant to present the CSS file (theme.css in the SVN repository), as I feel that there's just too much stuff in it. There were a bunch of specifically named divs that had custom properties that I had no choice but to include in the CSS file in order to overwrite their style. Everything in the CSS file is necessary, but it's way too verbose. I have a nagging feeling that there's a better way to do it. I was looking at LESS and SASS, but had a feeling the PM wouldn't be too happy about that. LESS and SASS provide the ability to template CSS files, and replace color/style references elegantly. They do however have to be compiled.
From a design point of view, I feel like I could have made the site more vibrant and given it a higher contrast, however, this would have broken the "no dark backgrounds" rule. I initially had some nice gradients, and transparencies, which provided enough contrast to pull off a color scheme that was heavily focused on shades of grey. Unfortunately, some of the darker portions of the background and certain content boxes became too dark to pass the before mentioned rule. I still have the dark theme floating around in my subversion files, and hopefully I can work it into a presentable product, but for now I'm submitting the lighter, lower contrast theme.
link to project:
http://code.google.com/p/kukuicup-rui/source/browse/#svn%2Ftrunk%2FCSS-Refactor
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