It was very exciting for me to watch you all vote on the poll for the first free premium theme by sooperthemes.com The race was between HelloFolio and Touchpro and these 2 themes overtook eachother many times in the voting, until finally I had to close the poll on march 30th when TouchPro won with a difference of just one vote!

Yesterday I posted the beta2 version of the free Tundra framework theme. With lots of bugfixes I hope this means we can almost get to 1.0. See project page for downloads and update instructions:

http://drupal.org/project/tundra

Another Framework Theme?

Yes, there's already loads of them around, but Tundra is very different from all of them and it offers unique features and a different approach to code organization. The theme itself resembles a theme framework as it has a built-in feature management and css-writing system.

Part of the Tundra development process was also creating a new jQuery dropdown-menu plugin from scratch. The included jQuery SooperFish plugin enriches Drupal with multi-column animiated menus that are fully configurable in the theme settings form.

Why does it matter?

Tundra is the first theme that offers advanced jQuery features with the ease of a point-and-click interface. All configuration is pulled into the theme settings form to form an interactive theme configurator. Some of the features are:

• Sooper Easing: This exposes advanced animation easing to all other features
• Sooper LivePreview: Makes changes to theme settings form for most features visible immediately, to ease the configuration process. See configurator demo.
• SooperFlex Grid System: Full grid control in both flexible and fixed width layouts without breaking in internet explorer 6. Skinr module is used to expose float (left/right) control and width control. Supports rational proportions and irrational proportions based on golden ratio (phi).
• Sooper DropdownKit: For usage and configuration of the jQuery SooperFish plugin.
• Sooper SlideshowKit: A jQuery cycle based solutiuon for creating configurable slideshows.
• : A jQuery nivo based solutiuon for creating configurable image or photo slideshows.
• Sooper LayoutKit: A theme-settings based system to configure fixed or fluid theme width, sidebar widths and mi-/max width.
• Sooper FontKit: A cufon based solution for using custom fonts and special effects (gradients/shadows) in your theme. 25+ fonts included in feature.
• Sooper BackgroundImageKit: A solution for settings a background image in the theme settings. Easy to extend with your own images.
• Sooper Linkicons: Automatically adds mime type and email icons to links. Includes 2 free icons sets.

Tundra is the theme that powers all of the premium drupal themes on SooperThemes.com. We made all the premium features GPL, and Tundra is our way of giving back to the community: it's a vessel with all of the code that was developed over the years.

Download Tundra on the Drupal.org project page

Here is some additional info, it's a screenshot of the product page on sooperthemes.com

I normally don't announce theme releases anywhere but this one is
special. I've worked hard to make this theme work well and the xhtml
template I was porting was well-coded as well.

This drupal theme will be a nice addition to the drupal theme repository, it doesn't look too
flashy and it can easily be used as a theme for small business
websites. What makes this theme special is it's high flexibility and
configurability, this theme properly supports 1, 2 or 3 columns
layouts, and it gets even better... The themes layout width is
completely configurable, you can set it as a fixed width in pixels or
as a fluid width, that being a percentage of the browser window width.
You can also set the width of the main content area. The main content
area is set to be a percentage of the total layout width, and when you
change it the sidebar(s) will automatically assume the leftover width.

Enough talking, heres some stuff in list form:

Bullit proof

• Doesn't break any drupal admin pages, or get broken by admin pages
• small backend interface improvements
• all structural and contextual layout blocks are flex-height (don't break when upscaling the font)

Fast

• Theme Images weigh a combined 1,6kb
• Style.css weighing in at 4.4kb
• Output HTML is just as minimal (full html output size varies with content)

Custom Theme options:

• set a fixed or fluid width layout
• adjust the % of
  width the main content area will take up and the sidebar(s) will
  automagically resize to fill up the leftover space
• subheader and navbar region are dispensable, to get an even cleaner layout!

Supported native drupal elements:

• 1,2 or 3 columns!
• main content / sidebar width configurable through theme options
• blocks
• primary menu
• secondary menu
• logo (including optional ie PNG fix for transparent backgrounds)
• logotext
• slogan
• mission

Tested to work with:

• Internet explorer 7
• Internet explorer 6
• Firefox
• Opera 9
• Safari (Safari for windows)
• Netscape 9

I'll commit the theme to drupal cvs after I get some sleep but you can already download it at my drupal themes section.