Joomla Templates Club 406,261 posts

[cgc0202 Friend cgc0202Join date: August 2007Posts: 2244Downloads:0Uploads:3 Thanks: 206 Thanked: 262 times in 1 posts]

#132467

Mod note:*Part of original post moved here*

First Look

This is a very clean design, an aesthetic quality that I have come to associate with my favorite Joomlart templates.. I am partial to white background because it is much easier to customize and font colors of various shades are much easier to read.

Because of my interest in the “Call Home” function*** I was looking and downloading some of the most used Joomlart templates as well as my favorites.

Aside from my all time favorite, the Teline II (mainly because of my interest in “magazine” type of templates), one of the Joomlart templates that I like quite a bit is the JA Mageia

http://template.joomlart.com/ja_mageia/index.php

which shares many similarities to Olivine. In term of understated elegance, if I am forced to choose one as a template for “corporate site”, I would likely choose JA Mageia as a starting point, then customize to include some features of the Olivine, especially for small size business enterprise. Or, if I have a larger business enterprise, I might try to emulate the classic elegance of JA Mageia to customize Olivine.

Customization

A greate advantage of the “clean design” of Olivine is that it makes its design more amenable to customization so that you can make it your own. For example, as beautiful as Nagya is, the latter would be more difficult to customize because of how intricately the Nagya “whistles and bells” have been integrated to create almost a piece of art. You need to have the artistic gift to customize it; anything less will spoil Nagya.

Fonts and Colors

What’s the deal with light gray on white background for main text? It seems there is a contest among some designers to find the lightest color of gray possible before it blends with the white background (or the reverse in black background).

For some sites, like a photo galleries or artsy sites that focus more on the work being displayed light text and small letter in white background would be effective. You do not want the text to distract in the appreciation of the work of art.

But, in any site that has text as the main content — news, magazine, books online, corporate sites, etc. — black on white, and “larger” font sizes are more effective. Try reading any of the works of Dostoyevsky using the font colors and sizes used in Olivine, you may need a few aspirins after a few pages.

And pastel colors? Be bold and sure — primary colors convey that.

Having stated the above personal preferences, if one knows stylesheets, as every website creator should be, it will be a matter of changing font colors, and sizes to customize this template.

Read More and Non-clickable Titles

Whoever first introduced the “Read more” link in template design ought to be shot. And it seems like lemmings, this has become a standard in many Joomla templates that I have seen.

“Read more” is for dummies, and to capitalize it “READ MORE” is going over the top. “Read more” is also a waste of valuable space.

You do not see this in presigious professional papers like the New York Times, BBC, etc. because they do not want to insult their readers.

Readers who visit a “text site” expect that there is more, so there is no need to make them feel like dummies, with “READ MORE” — just make the article titles clickable.. I do not know why it seems to have become more common for many templates to have non-clickable article titles.

“Functional Slide Show”

The slide show is nice but it is wha I call one of those “whistles and bells”. It would have been more effective if the slide show becomes a navigational tool — clickable to lead you to specific article, or section in the site.

This is one of the glaring omissions in the slide shows in most Joomlart templates. Joomlart ought to have their counterpart for navigational slideshows like those by GavickPro and RocketTheme.

Cornelio

N.B.

[Post Edit} Since this is a JoomlArt Forum, I accept the edits done by Hung to this post (see below). Having said this, from my own perspective, I find the original post to be in context to the Olivine forum. — CGC

[Hung Dinh Friend Hung DinhJoin date: September 2014Posts: 4408Downloads:11Uploads:189 Thanks: 309 Thanked: 3310 times in 3 posts]

#266480

Hi Cornelio,
Thank you for your nice comments about Olivine, however I have moved part of your post content about your call home to the the right discussion.

Please keep things to the topic as well of the function of the sub forum.

[Author]

Posts