Pre-TL;DR: http://animepapers.org/software/zenphoto/zenpapers/
ZenPapers is a minimalistic theme utilizing modern flat design elements. It provides maximum above the fold visibility with a widescreen focus, giving best user retention with the elements in the initial view-port. Anything related to general navigation is seen immediately at the top, while user related navigation elements are below any
viewed content but immediately visible. It is the spiritual successor to StopDesign and inspired by the default theme as well.
ZenPapers is the result of my initial work to update and maintain StopDesign. After reviewing issues / discussions / and commits to the StopDesign theme it seemed best to start over from scratch and bring the code in line with design standards used by modern ZenPhoto releases (as best demonstrated in the latest default theme). The code base is now much simpler (3,244 additions in 28 changed files). A list of the features that drew people to StopDesign and their implementation is below:
ZenPapers currently implements:
1) Wide thumbnails with a sub-album and image count where any album thumbnail is called.
2) Modules for image statistics, image display, and gallery description at the bottom of the index.
3) Previous/Next overlays for the image.php page, as well as thumbnail views of what the previous/next image is.
4) Top Mounted navigation, clearly differentiated from the content.
A major advantage that will be immediately noticeable to anyone using this theme is that the options -> theme section is modifiable in every way from the backend without digging at the code (greater usability). This comes in handy especially when trying to make a decision that wasn't simply doable in StopDesign (i.e. setting whether albums and images should be displayed on the same page, a feature that will be handy when I back-port it to StopDesign).
In doing this, the only major deviations code wise from any other template are a custom thumbnail for the album thumbnail and a call to grab the image.php's image height and width for overlay placement. This theme is simple and clean. I am submitting an initial pull request because it is fully functional now but will continue to improve it going forward. My next step is backporting the clean code to StopDesign but with implementation of all the current StopDesign imagery / coloring for anyone who continues to select that, though I hope they will find this the more pleasing option going forward.
Your feedback is welcomed and appreciated, this is the first release and your feedback helps shape the future of the work.
Thank you,
-Papyrus / APAdmin