I never had so much fun entering data."
That comment is from a recent client meeting of mine. I put a lot of effort into making the content entry forms make sense. Actually, it's not that hard. It requires imaging what content entry will be like, and trying to make it better. Thinking through field naming conventions, labels and help text. Ordering the fields on the content entry forms with intention. And having a good theme — a theme that calms down the visual chaos of these forms.
Welcome to Seven+.
This is an admin theme for Drupal 7. It is a child of the Seven theme, that looks remarkably like Seven. In fact, there's very little to this theme; it's all overrides and bug fixes. Most of what it does only affects content entry forms.
I use this theme on every project I build, so that I can use (and honor) the Seven theme from Drupal 7 — but with an improved content editor experience. Seven+ fixes many of the problem with visual hierarchy that Seven gets once you load up all the needed contrib modules for entering content.
On my sites, I make heavy use of Display Suite for placing content entry forms in two columns. And heavy use of the Chosen module to improve dropdown menus. Seven+ therefore supports both. You can see them in action in the screenshot of before and after.
If you would like to make your content entry form into two columns, use the Display Suite "2-col" or "2-col stacked" layout. I've written code to make them both responsive, and to create a gutter between the two columns. (By default they are fluid, and do not work on narrow screens. And there is zero space between columns. These are weaknesses in Display Suite, not in Seven, but I fix them all here in this theme.)
I'm placing this on Drupal.org so I can more easily organize and maintain changes over time across the multiple projects. I am not trying to grow this into a popular theme. I have no plans to promote or evangelize it's use. There's no grand master plan of theme domination.
If you'd like to use it, feel free. I hope it helps you.
I encourage you to fork this theme and re-write it, making it your own and adding any additional fixes to Seven that you need. It's a great starter kit for that — just install it and start hacking away. You'll be setup with all the files and structure needed to easily override or add to the Seven theme. If you do this, you should probably rename Seven+, claiming it as your own, and giving it your brand.
Or you could, of course, make a child theme of this child theme (turning Seven into a grandparent). That way in the future, you could download new versions of Seven+ and easily absorb any updates I might do.
Either way, please take control of your own fate. Please don't expect me to write CSS to fix all your bugs and problems with Seven. It's pretty likely that I won't be donating my time to do so. The spirit of this theme is for us do what we need, now, and get work done — instead of spending a lot of time in issues on Drupal.org, debating how to fix bugs, trying to teach folks about design, waiting for others to agree or give us permission. Just do it now! Hack this theme up and ship your project into the world working the way you want it to.
That said, if you come up with a better way to do something I'm attempting to do, or smooth out even more Seven bugs (yum), do feel free to submit an issue with a patch. (Or just paste the CSS syntax in the issue itself, if you don't want to/can't make a patch. That's cool with me.) Working together can be awesome.
