What I’d need in a theme (first thoughts):
- 2-column layout. Prefer sidebar on left? Might need 3-columns for recipe entries.
- Liquid design.
- Keyboard accessible.
- Strong preference for XHTML 1.0 Strict markup.
- Widget-able, able to cope with JS customization. AJAX support/addons a plus.
Possible candidates from built-in themes. (*) Denotes a very useful and/or inspirational theme. NWIHINM: Not what I had in mind (punt likely).
- (*) Almost Spring 1.3. Not liquid. Nice color scheme.
- (*) Barthelme 1.1. White, sparse. Liquid. I like the layout, but would change the fonts and header.
- (*) Connections Reloaded 1.5. Not liquid. Bullets nice but seem broken for single-line items. Nice color and texture schemes. Cool date format (needs polish). Nice horizontal menubar, though not defined by Pages. Widget ready.
- Craving4Green 1.0. Not liquid. Nice color scheme and use of Pages as horizontal menubar. Font style for headers, sections too plain. Amusing sets of bullets. Overall, though, NWIHINM.
- (*) Dapit Hapon 1.1. Not liquid, needs bullets. Nice layout for Pages (can use as section headers). Nice fonts, except main post content font shouldn’t be Helvetica. Date style a bit too heavy. Font and style for Search button and Select Month dropdown doesn’t work well. Author text should grab appropriate data, not be a placeholder for yet another section. Really like the colors, but would need to customize the images.
- Durable 0.2.1. Allows users to chose colors and other options. Liquid design. Overall style is NWIHINM. No meta section displayed.
- Fluidtyrs 1.0. Fluid, but not my first choice in color scheme. Not a fan of the tabbed interface. NWIHINM.
- No Limits 1.1. Not liquid. Layout of page bottom sometimes barfs. Nice color scheme and bullets. Nice fonts.
- Rounded V2. Is this the same as Rounded 1.0 from Theme Viewer? Anyhow, NWIHINM.
- (*) Thirteen 1.3. Font too small, not liquid. Nice images and colors.
- Tiga 1.0.1. Fluid 3 column layout, clear presentation but style too blocky for me. Don’t care for the font in headers, or the color scheme. Interestingly, does offer options for custom CSS, pages as menubar, etc.