In myphpnuke 188_8, the themes haven't changed in basic structure, you still have your header, footer and theme.php that do the same thing as the old theme format. All themes should be XHTML compliant and CSS has been validated through CSS2 with no errors or warnings.
This is the Mama of themes, does everything that is needed for 188_8 but even better: in 189+ all options can be switched on the fly.
IE Version 5 - 5.5 browsers get a partial table based theme, the rest get the all CSS theme for layout. Supposed to represent the best of both worlds by using an auto-switching format to build the theme to address the IE drop bug. Problem is, it doesn't fix the bug, haven't had time to investigate.
4 different block formatting options corresponding to admin settings. BLocks MUST have the title textbox filled in order for block formatting to work. This is the ONLY way to allow for independent formatting of blocks without breaking legacy themes:
Option 1: Format Blocks By Side (Left & Right)
Option 2: Format Blocks By Type
Option 3: Format Blocks By Block Category
Option 4: Format Blocks By Type, Show ONLY Custom Blocks And Login Block
4 different layout options, layout CSS ( 2-3col_cssp.css ) is pre-built to work with MPN
Option 1: Three Column Main Body, Show Both Left And Right Blocks ( All Blocks )
Option 2: Two Column Main Body, Only Show Left Blocks ( Left Blocks Only )
Option 3: Two Column Main Body, Only Show Right Blocks ( Right Blocks Only )
Option 4: No Blocks At All, ALL BLOCKS ARE OFF INCLUDING MAIN MENU ( No Blocks )
Represents a basic old style theme using tables for core layout, but formatting for those tables is all CSS based. This leads to a massive reduction in code and provided for XHTML compliance. THis theme also uses a core layout ( 2-3col_table.css ) CSS built for MPN
Represents a version 4 safe theme that uses basic CSS 1 where possible. The theme has a couple of issues, but nothing major. The theme is NOT XHTML compliant ( but it's close ) due to the incomplete support for later versions of CSS ( primarily CSS 2 ) and bugs in those browsers when using certain CSS markups. All version 4 and below browsers are forced to use theme in the NN4 directory, and those themes are the only ones that are presented to theme in theme selection options.
All core CSS files should NEVER be modified. They have been built specifically to work with each other, and there are markups that span across several different core files so it can get very confusing fast.
These files represent a reasonable set of default settings that apply to all themes in order to maintain consistent performance from all themes. They also represent the markup code that I have been using in core scripts for 189+.
Settings for markups in these files are mostly related to content positioning. The visual look ( i.e. like backgrounds/colors/etc ) are to be designated by the theme CSS. There are also alot of generic markup classes ( like font sizes ) that can be used in theme building.
For example:
NONO: <font size="1"></font> YESYES: <span class="font3"></span>
Center something:
NONO: <center></center> YESYES: <div class="center"></div>
Left-align:
NONO: <td align="left"> YESYES: <td class="t-left">
( note:
<td class="left">
will float the contents of the cell, not a good idea 99.9% of the time so best stay away from the float markups unless really needed )
CSS files are loaded ( cascaded ) in a manner where all markups with the exception of layout can be modified/reset by the themes CSS file.