I really like this theme. I’ve been using it as my main theme for both my personal and technical blogs for most of the time I’ve been using WordPress (almost 2 weeks now :-) ). What really caught my eye right off was that title popups are displayed with transparency. It just looks cool! It isn’t really suitable for technical blogs, however, as it uses justified text alignment (although that is easily changed) and it is a little narrow.

Overall Grade: A
Theme Name: Scattered 1.5 with Widgets
Version: 1.5
Theme URI: http://dancameron.org/wordpress/scattered-theme/
WordPress Theme Page: http://themes.wordpress.net/columns/2-columns/524/scattered-10/ (for Scattered 1.0)
Description: Classic Scattered design. http://dancameron.org/wordpress/
Author: Dan Cameron
Author URI: http://dancameron.org/
Widget-aware: Yes
Shows tagline: Yes
Shows counts: Yes
Hierarchical categories: Yes
Things I like:
  • Very clean look.
  • Excellent contrast.
  • Post headers are large enough that they provide good separation between posts.
  • Comments are displayed distinctly with alternating color.
  • Category counts are displayed by default (although archive counts are not).
  • Lists are displayed with markers properly.
  • Blogroll links in subcategories are displayed in a separate list.
  • Links to pages are displayed at the top.
  • Blockquotes are displayed in a different color (although not shaded) and with a thick vertical border on the left.
  • There is a photo at the top that gives the impression of expansiveness (taken by Dan’s wife, Sara Cameron).
  • Title popups are displayed with transparency.  Very cool!
Problems:
  • Comments are not displayed on pages even if that option is enabled for a page.
  • Visited links are too light.
  • Visited links when viewing a post or a page are completely invisible.
  • The title popup produces an error on images.
Things I don’t like:
  • Unordered lists are not indented enough, so the item markers end up in the margin.
    • I was able to fix this easily.
  • Unordered and ordered lists are indented differently.
    • I can fix this, but it may not be that big of a deal.
  • All text is displayed with justified text alignment, including text enclosed in <code></code> tags.  This is good (even looks nice) for non-technical information but not for technical information
  • The main display area is a little narrow, especially for technical information (e.g. code).
  • Sidebar is not always displayed.
Wishlist:
  • Allow the page width to be specified larger, or even fluid.
  • Allow different sets of colors to be specified (although I really like the default color set)
  • Allow the top image to be selected (again, I really like the image, so I would want any choices that were offered to be as good as that one).

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