Top Notch Themes pre-releases a landmark theme called Fusion

At DrupalCamp Colorado, Stephanie Pakrul and Jay Wolf spoke about the new module Skinr and how it relates to Panels for theming, and I left the session with a few pleasant goosebumps. For the uninitiated - as I was - Skinr is a module sponsored by Gravitek Labs which allows themes to expose style presets to blocks. The upshot is that once you create a nice style, you can allow users to apply the styles to virtually any area of a page with a couple clicks. This effectively incorporates several principles that have up until this point been applicable mostly to modules, like reuse of code, config-based changes and ... well ... general modularity. I could immediately see that this was an idea with really big potential. Even in its infancy, the Skinr module can do some pretty neat stuff.

Along these lines, Top Notch Themes did a pre-release of their new Fusion theme which incorporates Skinr functionality. The folks at TNT have really been quite genius with their positioning of the Fusion theme, and I think they have really wrapped their minds around where theming is headed over the next couple of years. Their base message is that Fusion is the only theme you'll ever need - a tall order for any one theme, and an interesting proposition. The theme is grid-based and comes in fluid or fixed 960 variety, and a plethora of styles are made available through Skinr for layout and look and feel.

The main purpose of the Fusion base theme, however, is not to provide a look and feel, but rather to supply a solid foundation for sub-themes and - get this - pluggable, extensible style packs (my term). So, instead of having to cut and paste stylesheets and images from one theme to another, instead you paste these style packs in. I really like this idea. Fusion will ship - I believe - with an example sub-theme that looks pretty decent out of the box. Fusion also exposes some nice configuration options you don't see in a lot of themes, like font settings and setting the default text in several areas of the site.

Fusion will be released into Drupal contrib, and then TNT will be selling sub-themes on their site. The fact that they will be moving their themes to Fusion says something really important about Skinr and Fusion. If a leading Drupal company that needs the support of the community to survive is throwing their weight behind these technologies, it's a good indication that it's something to watch very carefully.

I think the move to create a one-size-fits-all, highly modular theme is inevitable, and comes at an excellent time considering how important it is to the Drupal community to attract more designers and themers. I also think it's a daunting task that can be accelerated if there is a model to drive the development commercially, alongside community development, so I appreciate TNT's and Gravitek's roles in this venture. The ability to create 'style packs' (again, my term), is another way that themers can contribute, and Fusion / Skinr will allow designers to do an awful lot of design without worrying about theming. That's pretty powerful stuff.

I'm really looking forward to seeing how this moves forward. TNT and Gravitek have their work cut out for them, but I hope that quickly it will become a minor movement to change the way we look at theming from here on out.