Makes us feel so brilliant, so stylish, so French! Today we take a look at ourselves in the new FreeDream 1.3 theme designed and tailored by Caroline Monmerqué at DreamWeaver gratuit. We think this may be one of the very first themes to use some techniques of the CSS3/HTML5 framework. Oo-la-la!!

Thanks to a tag declaration demanded by IE browsers we can see that FreeDream uses the following new tags available in HTML5: header, footer, nav, article, section, hgroup, and aside, which are styled for block display.

Today we’re marking a new release of ThemeDreamer by showcasing an unmodified preview of the Basic201 template — one of six Basic Foundation Themes by Theme Dreamer that would allow you to customize your look. The Basic202 theme looks very similar to the Basic201, only the two-column layout is reversed. In addition to 201 and 202 there is one single-column theme and three three-column themes. Of course readers know that the first thing I look for in theme evaluation is where to find the “edit this” link. The logged-in editor will find the link at the bottom of the post or page.

PS: check out Dainis Graveris’ list of 20 wp theme frameworks @ 1stwebdesigner.com

UPDATE: Here’s what K2 looks like with the blueprint grid in the background, fyi. I set up the blueprint system as directed, but for some reason, it wouldn’t display until I pasted the “grid css” into my child theme style css.

Note on Update:

Eric Marden (a K2 co-creator) sez, “You may be interested in this, then:

github.com/xentek/shopp-architect

Its not really K2, but shares some of its DNA, and it uses the blueprint.css framework. Requires the (premium) Shopp plugin to really make it work.”

Thanks, Eric! The Shopp plugin (for readers who don’t know) enables e-commerce for wordpress sites. Eric has some other K2-friendly code at his site xentek.net.

And now we return you to our regular programming:

WPscape is where I come to try on WordPress themes. Today it’s the K2 (sometimes KayTwo) “theme framework”, Michael Heilemann’s follow-up to the “default” Wordpress theme Kubrick.

When you are grabbing themes and trying them out, you quickly discover that the theming world is an ocean wide and a quarter-inch deep, which is to say that themes usually contribute a “look” but not very much functionality. I think that is why the idea of the “premium” themes appears to be so popular, because the premium themes have “functions” that usually come delivered with some documentation and support.

Lately I’m a premium fan of Justin Tadlock and Brian Gardner because they both deliver themes that have toolboxes inside.

This K2 “theme framework” (now at version 1.0.2) interests me because it appears to provide reliable tools. In the new WordPress lingo, K2 looks like the sort of theme that would make a good “parent” theme. WordPress designers mostly interested in “eye appeal” could make good looking “children” from K2. Then there would be a nice division of labor between designers and coders: you can go looking for child themes of the the K2 framework.

As a default theme, the K2 framework competes with the Kubrick theme for graphical minimalism. It’s not a high-flying design to look at, but it is ready to function well. For example, the first thing I look for when trying a theme is how it handles edit and admin links. K2 does it nicely.

Already you are viewing a minimal “child theme” that I have named K2a and which looks exactly like its parent (with a few widgets activated in the sidebar). As the K2 documentation explains, only three things are need to produce a minimal child theme: a new folder in the theme directory (in my case K2a), a css file with the proper template name (in my case “K2″), and a graphic file copied from the K2 parent file (in my case “screenshot.png”). With just these three items I can go to my “Appearance” options and select the child theme K2a. Any modification from this point forward will allow me to incrementally transform the K2 default.

PS: Adopting K2 at a database project nonviolenceusa.org

OK, Justin Tadlock’s other child of Hybrid is called Old-School. Looks smashing to me.

Scary the speed of evolution, but look how clean these clones look. Here is “Leviathan” from Justin Tadlock, a child of his parent theme, “Hybrid.”