Base theme

Overview

Project lead: Paul Jackson (@pjackson28)

Purpose

The Base theme was developed to provide a template for creating other themes.

Benefits

  • Top tasks have been tested with users: contact us, search, return to home page, learn about us, stay connected through social media, navigate the site, read the terms and conditions, and toggling to the users official language of choice.
  • Conforms to the Standard on Web Accessibility and meets the principles of the Standard on Web Usability
  • Conforms to WCAG 2.0 AA
  • Responsive design that includes both mobile and desktop views
  • Uses HTML5 semantic elements and WAI-ARIA to enhance accessibility
  • Groups most of the navigation after the content area
  • Validates to HTML5 and is XML conformant

Recommended usage

Use When

This theme can be used to build additional themes for the Web Experience Toolkit.

Do Not Use When

This theme should not be used as is, it should only be used as a template for another theme.

Appearance

The theme adapts the Web Experience Toolkit core framework for use on other sites.

Content

Content should focus on users' top tasks. Users tend to navigate through the content area first and then to the menus. They are looking for keywords that will help them meet their information need. Write in active voice and use verbs. Users will often scan the information looking for things that stand out - like links. Each link must be descriptive and representative of the content to which it leads. This is especially pronounced when users are accessing the site via a mobile device.

Implementation

General instructions

  1. Use the \theme-base\*.html files to create your Web pages.
  2. Optional: Create and install one or more new CSS files (will be used for custom CSS)
  3. Optional: Create link(s) to the new CSS file(s) in between the following comments: 
    < !-- CustomScriptsCSSStart -->
< !-- CustomScriptsCSSEnd -->
  4. Correct all *.css, *.js, and *.gif file paths referenced in the installed *.html files
  5. Replace the page title (in between <title> and </title>), the site title, and the content title (in between <h1 id="wb-cont"> and </h1>)
  6. Correct the metadata values

Content page-specific instructions (cont*.html)

  1. Correct the menu bar links or remove the menu bar
  2. Correct the mega menu links or remove the mega menus
  3. Correct the English/Français link or remove the language selection link
  4. Optional: Implement either secondary navigation version 1 (maximum of 3 levels) or secondary navigation version 2 (maximum of 4 levels)
  5. Correct the search field or remove the search field
  6. Correct the breadcrumb or remove the breadcrumb
  7. Correct the site footer links
  8. Correct the Date modified/Date de modification or change to Version
  9. Optional: Fix the mobile view header navigation bar to the top of the viewport by adding the following to settings.js: 
    // Mobile view
var wet_boew_mobile_view = {
	header_fixed : true
};

Welcome page-specific instructions (sp-pe*.html)

  1. Correct the English and French language links
  2. Optional: Include language selection links for other languages

Server message page-specific instructions (serv*.html)

  1. Replace the English and/or French messages.
  2. Optional: Include messages for other languages

Examples

Development

The code for the Base theme is located in several places within the source folder of WET:

Known Issues

  • CSS styling will not be entirely consistent across all browsers since many of them will interpret CSS syntax differently.
  • Usability testing is required on the styles in the CSS grid system.

Version History

Related Documentation