if you start with a “skeleton” theme, you don’t have to remove all the features of the, say, BlueMarine theme. That is, you really get the necessary minimum, plus some extra features which can help you in creating a standards-compliant, nice theme.

Previously, I tried the “take a theme and change” route, and I like the Zen approach much more (out of the three “skeleton” themes I’m currently using only Zen). Also: note, that if you take some existing theme, you would better choose one which looks similar to what you are trying to achieve – otherwise it’s easier to start from scratch…

Good luck in your theme creation!

I’m about to attemopt my first theme. I want to convert an XHTML template into a drupal theme. What is the advantage of using these skeleton themes compared to say just copying the BlueMarine theme, and editing it from there? This is all new to me, so not really sure what’s the best route to go…

Notice: almost all of mentioned “base” themes are released for both Drupal 5 and Drupal 6. Just Blueprint is released for Drupal 5 only (jet)

I used Zen as a starting point, and do not regret that decision at all.

As for em2px, px2em: I was only looking through the docs/files of each theme, and it was in Blueprint that I stumbled upon instructions on how to convert between em and px values; at the time of looking through, that appeared to be some necessary modification each time you develop a theme. (Note: to my shame, I’m not yet used to using relative em-style font/element sizes.) Now I do understand that Blueprint only holds generally applicable em2px/px2em conversion routines, which aren’t really necessary for all the themes one might be developing on the basis of Blueprint.

But so far I’m satisfied with Zen

Could you tell a little more about what you mean by the em-to-px and px-to-em conversions with Blueprint?