Introducing Scene: Urban Borough, a New Theme from TypePad

We are introducing a new theme today called Urban Borough.

Urban Borough is the first release from a brand new theme set, which will consist of four themes altogether, grouped under the name Scene. The remaining three themes will be released over the next several weeks.

Common between all of the Scene themes will be:

• wide columns (perfect for larger images and sidebar advertisements/widgets)
• clean lines (classic styling for long-term use of the theme)
• lots of balanced white space (ideal for helping to keep your blog from looking cluttered)
• complementary color schemes to match the (gorgeous!) theme banners;
• blog footer styles focused for content-rich setup; and
• optimized styling for mobile views (mobile views will see a slimmed-down version of your blog, showing only the navigation, banner, blog title, and blog posts; all other content will not display)

We're very excited to be bringing you Urban Borough, as well as the rest of the themes in the coming weeks. We hope you take the time to preview and apply each theme as they're released. Feel free to lean on the thematic strengths or make adjustments via Custom CSS or the Content screen.

Want to learn more about the Scene theme and adjustments you can make? We've prepared and published an article to walk you through all of the great features and tweaks available for Scene.

Comments

[quagmire]

WTF

I login to my typepad account an I can't access anything. Neither can I figure out what the hell has happened. How about a way to contact someone? Or do you have the Symantec business model?

[Roger Sharp]

Loving the new theme.
Feedback so far. The top nav bar does not sit all that well, especially if it has a background colour.
And not all the CSS options work, having trouble changing anything related to post titles... font/colour etc.

[Roger Sharp]

And when you make an extended post the font size is different between the first chunk of text and the extended. Thought it was cos i'd changed the font for the whole blog (read only the posts and post footer in reality) took out the CSS and its still odd...
Not been tested to well this theme?! ;)

[hewn & hammered]

Looks like it has a lot of bugs to work out, but it's nice to see that you haven't given up on new themes altogether, as I thought you would after the purchase; it's been over a year since the last theme release (vs. over 50 in the 2 years previous), so I hope this isn't just an anomaly, and that you've got at least one developer working on new these full-time.

And when will you have your own bundled type solution, ala flavors.me? Talk to MyFonts.com about it ... I know they'd love to have you include some of their fonts for Typepad users; would be a lot easier than going to some third party like TypeKit, and now that so many CMSes are bundling this, it's about time that Typepad got out to the forefront, too, instead of leading from behind as has been the norm lately.

[Bri]

If you're having trouble logging into your account, you should review the "unable to sign in" article we have in the Knowledge Base: http://help.typepad.com/sign_in.html

If you still have trouble, you can contact us via the form here: http://www.typepad.com/contact/

[Bri]

Could you let us know what you mean it doesn't sit well? The theme has been tested in all of the most popular browsers, across Windows and Mac, so if you can clarify that will help us out a lot.

When you're trying to override CSS for an existing theme, you should include the !important declaration to tell the browser that you want to override it.

To learn more about Custom CSS, please read:
http://help.typepad.com/custom_css.html

[Bri]

We tested this theme fairly well, actually, but the extended entry issue did manage to bypass us. We'll address that issue when we release the next Scene theme so that it's no longer an issue.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Bri]

Not too many tweaks to make, actually, but definitely a couple that managed to miss us during testing. :) So many use-cases to keep in mind, but this will help us to improve the future build and release theme process.

As for bundled solutions, like flavors.me, I can't speak to that. We have a lot of plans in the works for TypePad, though, and we hope you continue to share your feedback as we implement those developments.

[Yudha Yan Kusuma]

On Firefox 6.02, top nav bar not as expected when I try to move search module to navigation bar. It is fine on other theme and Internet Explorer 9.

Also on IE 9 with compability view turned on, blog footer layout broken.

[Roger Sharp]

Thanks, the important thing helped out... All done now.
The nav bar has the underline that looks odd if you make the background any solid colour, but have sorted it all now.
Colour scheme and fonts all changed.
Thanks for your help.
www.surfphoto.co

[Bri]

Can you clarify what you mean by the blog footer layout is broken? I'll have to see what you mean in order to get a better idea of what's happening in IE9's Compatibility View.

As for FF6.02, the search module isn't a default setup for the navigation bar, so styling for it wasn't included in the theme design. I'll write in those changes, though, so that it sits a bit better within the navigation.

Thanks for the great feedback!

[Bri]

Hi again!

There is a bottom border for the .nav-list-item links, but that actually doesn't need to be there, so I'll remove it for the theme before we release the next version.

To remove it in your blog, though, just go to Design > Custom CSS, and enter:

.nav-list-item a { border: 0px !important; }

[Bri]

Until we can lock in the changes to the theme, you can adjust the Extended Entry text by including the following in your Custom CSS:

.entry-body, .entry-more {
color: #666666;
font-size: 82%;
padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px;
margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;
}

That's the default text settings for the body of the post, but what the stylesheet is currently missing is the .entry-more. That's what we'll be adjusting when we update the stylesheet with the next release.

So many different scenarios to test for, but I'm glad it's only been a few smaller issues that have been brought up. We really appreciate your feedback, as it'll definitely help us to improve the whole process moving forward. :)

[Yudha Yan Kusuma]

On IE9 Compability View (CV), blog footer always shown on 1 column, instead of the default 3. Here are some screenshots on several browsers:

Chrome 13 :
http://yudha.typepad.com/scene/Chrome%2013.jpg

FireFox 6.02 :
http://yudha.typepad.com/scene/FireFox%206.02.jpg

IE9 :
http://yudha.typepad.com/scene/IE9ComViewOff.jpg

IE9 (CV) : http://yudha.typepad.com/scene/IE9ComViewOn.jpg

Opera 11.51 :
http://yudha.typepad.com/scene/Opera%2011.51.jpg

Short character module list items (footer-links) presented in one line, where they should be on separate line. For example : Discogs and Pitchfork, as seen on screenshots.

[Roger Sharp]

Border removed with that thanks!

[Roger Sharp]

That's sorted the extended post text issue thank you...

One little thing (just so you know) when I click to bring up the extended post (with its now uniform body text) the post title is reverting to the original blog format font, not the Georgia/TNR that I have added with CSS...