The Golden Lotus theme is based on Default however I have re-worked almost every phtml file to make it more semantically correct.
The theme will offer:
1) XHTML Strict 1.0
2) Some CSS 3 support
3) 3 columns elastic layout
4) Min-width/max-width support
5) Source order for SEO-centric (Header, Middle, Right, Left, Footer)
6) WCAG A and Section 508 compliant
7) Built with accessibility in mind
8) Logical tabbing navigation for browsers that support tab feature (the category flyout is a bit tricky though and may not be able to achieve)
p/s. some out of the box features may not be supported.
Only 4 background images are used - my design philosophy is that, a flexible and a good template should not stuffed with too many images just for visual needs as smart use of CSS can get many visual result. The header section is intentionally making it empty so that whoever wants to use the template can easily insert the store name/image.
Have not checked in IE yet, this theme looks pretty in FF and Safari; looks OK in Opera and don’t know that IE bugger yet.
Magento template system is really flexible, though the learning curve is steep, it offers so much for web designers, especially those who truely understands CSS. Thank you Varien for offering this wonderful template system!
Just one thing I would change is the presentation of the company information etc. in the footer. This kind of design can look a bit blocky and in the footer this shows up most clearly. I see that in most places you have gotten around this cleverly by means of rounded corners and contrasting borders. You will notice also that the white background images are normally displayed against a white background block. In the bestsellers list this doesn’t happen.
