I was away from the site for a while. Imagine my surprise to see a new development team in place. What a wonderful turn of events. I know there are now numerous themes available for Zenphoto but I wanted to create a wishlist that future designers can keep in mind. If someone has made such a list, I am sorry for being repetitious. Please feel free to add/subtract features in response to this post.

1. MAXIMIZE USE OF BROWSER REAL ESTATE. A good theme must use as much of the browser window as possible so "features" should not reduce the space available to the photo. (Applies to image.php).

2. NO SCROLLING: Viewing the image must NEVER require any kind of scrolling regardless of browser window size. This is especially true of images in portrait orientation. Nothing distracts from the photo more than truncation. (Applies to image.php).

3. FULL SUPPORT OF AVAILABLE SUBALBUM OPTIONS: This is obvious. (Applies to entire theme.)

4. TRICASA HACK: This is something Tris wrote in a moment of inspiration and REALLY speeds up loading time. I think this really helps to give a professional touch to the theme. To find it seach for "Tricasa" on this forum. (Applies to entire theme.)

5. PROMINENT NAVIGATION BUTTONS. This is obvious.

6. PROMINENT FILENAME DISPLAY and FILE NUMBER DISPLAY (e.g. Image 1 of 100 etc.)

7. SWITCHABLE DOWNLOAD BUTTON. This may need more than just theme writing skills since a real solution will involve password protected albums. Still, a good feature to wish for and if someone writes the backend, the theme should support it.

8. INTEGRATED SLIDESHOW. Again, this is an advanced feature and may need modifications to the main Zenphoto code.

9. USER SELECTABLE BACKGROUND COLOR. Very useful since some like light, some like dark and some like 18% grey.

10. FAST LOADING. Avoid loading lots of stuff especially on image.php. There is really no need to slow down navigation.

So there you have it, my take on Zenphoto themes.

Executive summary: Images should be displayed as BIG as possible, should require NO SCROLLING to be viewed completely and should really LOAD FAST. I think everything else is secondary in an online album.

One last thing, if possible ALWAYS include a DEMO of your brand new theme in the Wiki.

3 is done in the updated themes.

8 exists in some themes (effervescence_simpleviewer is one)

9 exists in some themes (default is one) However this is at the control of the site admin. For those themes that support it, adding additional color schemes is fairly simple, you just copy and modify one of the css files to your liking.

All this is in the community build on trac.