WordPress Theme Review: Pool, Cutline, Rounded, Day Dream
This is installment #3 of the WordPress theme review. My goal is to provide a clear document of the themes for the WordPress.com community. I also want to report all theme bugs to improve the experience of WordPress.com community. Support this project by linking to https://engtech.wordpress.com/tools/wordpress/wordpress-theme-reviews/ on your WordPress.com blog.
Three new themes were introduced on WordPress since the last review: Cutline, Rounded and Day Dream. I’ll focus this week’s WordPress.com Theme Review on them (as well as Pool).
Pool: Good clean theme, a little too blue.
Pro: Custom image header, page templates, current page is highlighted in sidebar.
Con: Ordered lists do not display properly in posts.
Cutline: I’m *very* impressed with this theme. Very clean looking, very functional.
Pro: Custom image headers, visited links change colour, no bugs.
Con: No page templates.
Rounded: I don’t like it. It looks like an old Blogspot skin ported to WordPress. It is one of the buggiest (under Firefox) themes I have seen so far.
Pro: Links are very distinct from text, full width and scales well to all resolutions (even 640×480).
Con: Fixed sized font, CSS bugs.
Day Dream: If you’re worried about looking good at 640×480 then Daydream is the theme for you. Having the sidebar widgets below the posts instead of beside is good, except that it should be two columns instead of three. The sidebar text wraps too much, and if the words are too big they will overlap the text beside them.
Pro: Custom image headers, colour themes, 640×480 supported, sidebar on bottom, page templates.
Con: Wasted space on higher resolution, text wrap issues, hard to see links in a body of text.
The clear winner out of these four is Cutline. Great new theme. I’ll be using Cutline on my wptheme test page until I do the next series of testing.
After the break a big table that compares all the features of these four themes at a glance.
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Hover your mouse over the question mark (?) to see an extended explanation of what that category means.
Themes were only tested with the latest version of Firefox. Internet Explorer 6 has too many CSS bugs to use it for checking. For example, with Internet Explorer if you have a word or image in the sidebar that is too wide, the sidebar will break.
| Theme | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Theme background (?) | white | white | white | white |
| Theme text (?) | black | black | brown | black |
| Theme link text (?) | blue | blue | brown | blue |
| Links are very distinct from text (?) | No | Yes | Yes | No |
| Links are NOT very similar to text (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Visited links are different colour (?) | No | Yes | No | No |
| Visited links blend to text (?) | No | Yes | No | No |
| Theme accents (?) | blue | clean | brown, green | color theme |
| Theme image (?) | none | none | flowers | none |
| Major features | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Screenshot (?) | Screenshot | Screenshot | Screenshot | Screenshot |
| Layout width (?) | Fixed (800px) | Fixed (770px) | Flexible (min 640px) | Fixed (641px) |
| Custom image header (?) | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Number of sidebars (?) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Widget support (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Page templates (?) | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Categories link to wordpress.com (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | |||
| Resolution | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| 640×480 (?) | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| 800×600 (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 1024×768 (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| 1280×1024 (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Header | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Blog name (?) | Yes | Yes | bug031 | bug037 |
| Blog tagline (?) | No | No | No | Yes |
| Custom image header (?) | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Top navbar support (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Navbar works with too many pages (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | |
| Navbar has a Home button (?) | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| Footer | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Powered by WordPress (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Logout (?) | No | No | No | No |
| Jump back to Top (?) | No | No | No | No |
| Entries RSS (?) | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Comments RSS (?) | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Link to XFN.org (?) | No | No | Yes | No |
| Does not display happy face (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Main Page | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Max image width (?) | 550px | 640px | 640px | 430px |
| Wide images behaviour (?) | Chop | Stretch | Chop | Chop |
| Font typeface (?) | “Trebuchet MS”, “Bitstream Vera Serif”, Utopia, “Times New Roman”, times, serif | Georgia, “Times New Roman”, Times, serif | “Lucida Grande”, “Lucida Sans Unicode”, “Trebuchet MS”, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif | Georgia, “Book Antiqua”, “Souvenir Lt BT”, “Times New Roman”, serif |
| Font size (?) | normal | 0.625 | 12px | normal |
| Post titles capitalization (?) | as typed | as typed | as typed | as typed |
| Next / prev page (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Edit post (?) | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Dates above/below (?) | above post | above post | above post | above post |
| Displays post author (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) |
| Author name is linked (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | |
| Displays categories (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | |
| Categories above/below (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) |
| Categories link to wordpress.com (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) |
| Comments above/below (?) | above post | above post | below post | above post |
| Comments line jumps directly (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Show excerpt instead of post (?) | No | No | No | No |
| HTML tag style bugs (?) | bug028 | No | No | bug038 |
| Blockquote shows paragraph breaks (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Horizontal rule (HR) is styled (?) | No | No | No | |
| Pre text has horizontal scroll (?) | No | Yes | No | No |
| Images display bugs (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | bug042 | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) |
| Image has margin (?) | No | Yes | No | No |
| Image has border (?) | No | Yes | No | No |
| Table has margin (?) | Yes | No | bug032 | Yes |
| Table has border (?) | No | No | No | No |
| MORE tag (?) | Continue reading POST… | Keep reading –> | (more…) | Read the rest of this entry… |
| Single Post View | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Sidebar displays (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Edit post (?) | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Next / prev post (?) | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Next / prev by post title (?) | No | Yes | No | Yes |
| Comments (?) | ||||
| Displays edit comments link (?) | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Displays trackbacks different than comments (?) | Yes | No | No | No |
| Display old comments when Off (?) | Yes | Yes | bug033 | Yes |
| Sidebar | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Number of sidebars (?) | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Sidebar location (?) | Right | Right | Right | Bottom |
| Sidebar header capitalization (?) | As typed | Uppercase | Lowercase | As typed |
| Sidebar image width (?) | 170px | 220px | 310px | 160px |
| Wide images behaviour (?) | Run-off page | Chop | Run-off page | Run-off page |
| Sidebar widgets support (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Sidebar widgets bugs (?) | No | No | bug034 | No |
| Text widgets have outline (?) | No | No | No | No |
| HTML tag style bugs (?) | No | No | No | bug039 |
| Bullet for Unordered Lists (?) | No | Yes | bug035 | No |
| Numbers for Ordered Lists (?) | No | Yes | No | No |
| Pages | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Sidebar displays (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Selected page is hilighted (?) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | (missing from spreadsheet) | |
| Pages with hierarchy (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Page order displayed properly (?) | bug029 | bug030 | bug036 | bug040 |
| Page edit links (?) | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Page comments (?) | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Page Templates Supported | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Archives (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Displays page text (?) | No | No | ||
| Displays post titles (?) | No | No | ||
| Displays page titles (?) | No | No | ||
| Displays categories with archives (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Links / Blogroll (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Sort by categories (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Image replaces link name (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Only displays Visible On links (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Target field used (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| XFN microformat in rel attribue (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| Description used in title attribute (?) | Yes | Yes | ||
| RSS displays (?) | No | No | ||
| Notes displays (?) | No | No | ||
| Rating displays (?) | No | No | ||
| Displays page text (?) | No | |||
| 2 Column Page (?) | No | |||
| 1 column of text, no sidebar (?) | ||||
| 2 Column Archives (?) | No | |||
| 1 column of text, no sidebar (?) | ||||
| 2 Column Links (?) | No | |||
| 1 column of text, no sidebar (?) | ||||
| Categories | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Category hierarchy (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Number on same line (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Category description used as title (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Do not display empty categories (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Display parent if child exists (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Blogroll | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Sort by categories (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Image replaces link name (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Only displays Visible On links (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Target field used (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| XFN microformat in rel attribue (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Description used in title attribute (?) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| RSS displays (?) | No | No | No | No |
| Notes displays (?) | No | No | No | No |
| Rating displays (?) | No | No | No | No |
| Custom features | Pool | Cutline | Rounded | Day Dream |
| Colour themes (?) | Yes | |||
| Header Colour (?) | ||||
| Sidebar orientation (?) | ||||
| Sidebar is at bottom of page (?) | Yes | |||
| Title orientation (?) | Yes | |||
| “About me” information (?) | ||||
| Home Link Sidebar Widget (?) | ||||
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Pool Bugs
- bug028: Posts: Ordered lists (<OL>) are not styled and do not have hierarchy.
- bug029: Sidebar: Page order is not used for displaying pages.
Cutline Bugs
- bug030: Sidebar: Page order is not used for displaying pages.
- bug042: Images: Cutline handles images differently than all other themes. Most people will be frustrated with the way it handles them. http://cutline.tubetorial.com/image-handling-with-cutline/.
Rounded Bugs
- bug031: Blog title: blog title does not wrap, it will cut off the blog title if it’s too long.
- bug032: Posts: normal text is indented on this theme, but tables are not. Tables will be to the left of text.
- bug033: Comments: If comments are off, but the post had pre-existing comments, the comments are not displayed.
- bug034: Sidebar: the pages/sidebar widgets do not wrap long names properly and instead break horribly.
- bug035: Sidebar: Unordered lists (<UL>) are not styled and do not have hierarchy. .
- bug036: Sidebar: Page order is not used for displaying pages.
Day Dream Bugs
- bug037: Blog title: if blog title wraps it will make the tagline overlap into the navigation bar.
- bug038: Post title: Post titles wrap text very strangely. If the text goes over the line the entire line becomes indented. Heading4 (<H4>) is centered and it looks horrible.
- bug039: Sidebar: Ordered lists (<OL>) indent differently than unordered lists (<UL>) and do not respect sidebar column (text over-runs sidebar beside it instead of wrapping).
- bug040: Sidebar: Page order is not used for displaying pages.
- bug041: Write page: archives template works, but the message says “archives (don’t use here)”.
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