SOC 2008: Civic CRM Look and Feel

[jonv79]

Greetings,

I have been lurking and reading up on what kind of ideas have been proposed both by students and from within your organization. I was looking at your project ideas and was intrigued by the ideas involving CiviCRM.

I have been studying the proposal for Code 08006: "CiviCRM look and feel: Give some of Joomla!'s great attention to UI design and layout to CiviCRM". I am very interested in utilizing my web skills and honing the look and feel of CiviCRM's UI.

I did have a question about the scope of this project though. The project page mentions developing a new theme, but I didn't know if that was for the base installations of CiviCRM or the overall theme of the project. Also, in putting together my proposal, I was curious to whether any design standards already exist and if any documentation/white papers are in place.

Any further details would be greatly appreciated. I am very excited about this project and helping implement a clean, well-designed look that also has the documentation behind it to ensure easy, future upgrades.

--Jon V.

[mcsmom]

Cool, I'm sorry I didn't see your post earlier. Please make sure to come and ask questions in the skype chat
http://www.skype.com/go/joinpublicchat? ... m9q2igHXnQ

In terms of look and feel I think one thing to consider is how to link CiviCRM into existing Joomla! templates so that the CiviCRM pieces do not feel so different from the rest of the site. I do think some templating would help (such as in the user dashboard and error messages ), but I'd also like to see more general attention to the CiviCRM UI, both for administrators and end users. Some of that might include implemeting some modules or plugins, creating views so that the menu links behave similarly to other Joomla! components, and in general making it more familiar for Joomla! users.

I think if you visit the CiviCRM forums there is some recent discussion about templating.

Overall, CiviCRM is much more fully implemented in the backend than the front end, and it would be awesome to open up some new possibilities there.

[jonv79]

Thank you so much for the reply. As I am polishing up my proposal, it is great to know I am heading in the right direction. I have been keeping an eye on the CiviCRM forums as well. So far, I have been focusing on the template system and looking into integration with Joomla! templates and components is a fantastic addition to that process.

On a side note, I have yet to get the links to the group chat on Skype to work. I have the latest Skype installed on my iBook, and I get an error message from Skype saying to download the latest version. It isn't exclusive to Safari (which I use) as I have tried on Firefox as well. I have tried two or three different ways and nothing works. Oh well.

[mcsmom]

Interestingly, just this morning I was doing something on civicrm and it broke my template, so I really think this is important . Part of what happens is that civicrm goes off into its own space with no menu links so the templates can easily get mixed up when you press a submit button or something else.

I don't know if you saw the other civicrm topic about making a suite of modules and plugins but that would also really be great and not too hard I think.

[conductorchris1]

Hey, I just wanted to say how much of a difference this project will make to me and the work my organization is doing. This, more than anything, can make a difference to us. So thank you in advance.