All over the internet you can find tutorials, help, samples on creating wordpress theme. Still, there are some topics that are not covered by many of them. I will try to focus on the solution of practical problems I had while creating Starscape theme.

This first part will cover following problems and solutions:

1. Using theme Wordpress options within CSS or JavaScript file
2. Adding Gravatar support to the theme
3. Separating trackback from comments
4. Creating Post Date button

And as always, Starscape theme contains all this, so you can check it out also.
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Like it or not, MS Internet Explorer is still the most used browser in the world. The reason for this is MS Windows XP/Vista. IE is bundled with every copy of Windows. Now we have two major IE version:

1. Internet Explorer 6 [IE6]
2. Internet Explorer 7 [IE7]

I will show you what optimizations I needed to add to Starscape to make the theme more compliant with IE6/IE7. Maybe you can use some of this optimizations in developing your own themes.

As for the standard compliance, IE7 is much better, and it’s much easier to make optimizations so theme will work in IE7 as it should. One of the most important improvement for design point of view is full PNG transparency support.
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Well, the work on new Starscape engine takes more time then anticipated. I was ill for a few days, unable to work, but now things are getting together. Nova engine turns to be more complicated to create, but much simpler then default classic Starscape engine.

As you can see, there are no boundaries left or right, and the layout can be with fixed width or fluid. Even more width of every element (header, main menu, center, footer) can be adjusted separately. Each element can have independent background color or background picture. There are much more Nova features in the works, so be patient, I think it will be worth waiting.

Also, there are a lot of other overall changes and new features, and most important fixes.

Official release date for Starscape 1.3.0 Cygnus is 4.july 2008.

After some two weeks of work, here is new major revision of Starscape theme, code named Hydra. This revision contains a lot of behind the scenes changes that will allow new important design features I am working on for the next Cygnus revision. More on the Cygnus preview will be available in the next 5 or 6 days.

As for the changes, detailed list is available on the theme page, so check it out. And if you continue to read this article, I will point to some of the highlights of Hydra.
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This is new Orion build on the road to Hydra. There are some important updates included in this release, and I am recommending to update older versions to this one.

The most important new feature for this version is new Print layout. Now all posts and pages have command Print bellow the post (picture on the right). This will display only post or page withound any background, header or sidebars. Only footer copyright notice remains.

Also, few more problems with IE6 are now fixed: rendering of the header background and logo in the header, small menu problems. Theme is compatible in IE6 and IE7, and almost with IE5.5 (small problems), but not with IE8 Beta 1.

There are some small changes to control panel as an introduction to more changes in Hydra, and completely new CSS files with separate typography and cleaned styles. Typography is still incomplete, I am working on it.