The premium theme crowd gets a great release today with the Genesis framework 1.8 update from StudioPress.
The 1.8 update appears geared toward making customization and theme development even easier. Comment lines now make up over 40% of all lines of code in Genesis 1.8, up from 30% in Genesis 1.6, with a significant amount of non-comment code having been added in the meantime as well.
Here’s just some of the main changes made to the framework:
- New SEO Controls
- New Extendable Classes for Creating Admin Menus
- Completely Disable a Navigation Menu, from functions.php
- Color Style Options
- Code Standards and Inline Documentation
New Genesis Framework Default Theme
The team also updated the design of the default theme that appears when you have Genesis activated without a child theme applied. Besides the new look, the theme is also responsive, which means it will adjust its dimensions based on what kind of device the site is accessed from.
Genesis 1.8 does require the newest version of WordPress 3.3.1 to be fully compatible. After that, grabbing the update is a snap, just go to Themes and click to move to the new version. A major benefit of using a theme framework is that the update only effects the actually framework files, and not the customization of your child theme.
For more info on the Genesis theme framework, checkout the site at studiopress.com