MARCUS: If you've got suggestions for something more innovative than a 3 column layout I'd be happy to look them over.

Regarding the standard 3-column layout, my personal belief is that if you need the space, instead of having two defined sidebars, combine them into a wider sidebar column on one side. I'm not saying don't do 3-column layouts, I'm just saying that the style and concept of the traditional 3-column layout is a poor choice. It's just an easy option that doesn't take much thought, just like drop-down menus and many other interface short-cuts that hurt usability.

If the 3rd column is basically just an extension of the primary, and not a defined column, then it works better. Also, if it's outside of the primary container in the design, that can also work alright. I'm not going to get into a huge usability discussion here, though, as I understand this is just for a starter theme, so stick with what you know as long as it's easy for merchants/designers to adjust. They're all going to look the same anyway, in all reality.

MITCH: Back to basics... for just a second.

Regarding the eye-tracking study, it's incomplete and misleading. I really do think that websites should follow the excellent typography and layout traditions of print, and love designs that really pull it off. Good typography is where it's at.

But the examples in those eye-tracking tests just don't work for that kind of study and are in complete contradiction, because those examples in question follow some really bad design conventions. You can't have an accurate eye-tracking study and determine what will be ignored, only focusing on the overall 'shape' of the site, because the content is absolute noise from a design and typography standpoint. So in this case, the eye isn't just going to the main content just because it has pretty pictures, but because it's the only space on the page that isn't as much of an ugly suffocating mess as the rest.

The only outcome of a test like that is, "Hey, white-space is a good thing." It's funny that the numbered parts of the page in the example mirror how horrible each bit looks, which is really just common sense; no study needed. It has nothing to do with whether a left sidebar works better than a right sidebar (if you put the branding and navigation column on the right, you'll probably get the same kind of focus result). Because good design can guide the eye.

BOB: Did I read somewhere that <div was being deprecated?

Not that I'm aware of, but should only be used when fitting, just like any other tag. :)

CHRIS: Doesn't maintaining 2 sets of controls make it more difficult to implement code changes for both BV and developers?

If my understanding is that the new set of modules will eventually replace the old, providing much needed improvements and fixes to markup and functionality without breaking existing designs, then no, I think you'd choose one and stick to it. I may be misunderstanding part of the purpose, however.

Argghh.. I wrote a half a page answer to this and I’ve closed it by mistake before posting it.
Sorry for jumping late, I was a bit offline. Here are my answers:
1. Columns are great and easy to use. They allow you to add new content on the fly to maintain your site fresh with ease. Not the columns are the problem but the fact that the block contents are not consistent thus adding them to columns makes them look odd sometimes. Please keep the columns.
2. No. Please No. Define only generic styles and use selector to style the proper element. div.mailinglist div.contentblock h4 is good to select the h4 of the mailing list block content. There is no need to add yet another class for that.
3. No. Please use lower case only to have the css compatible with XHTML (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#C_13)
4. Yeah, could be but it will be very hard to maintain.
5. Yes, and please make sure you remove them from places they were never supposed to be (e.g. a div or span inside an h1/h2)
6. c.! <div class=”mailinglist”><div class=”contentblock”><h2>my header></h2><div class=”blockcontent”> [content goes here] </div></div></div>
Why: This style allows me to re-style the content block *inside* the mailinglist with ease (div.mailinglist div.contentblock { background-color: red; }). The other style does not. Plus using this model allows me to use interesting background image combinations to achieve stuff like rounded borders.
7. Yes
a. Use UL/LI whenever possible. Menus, consecutive elements, product lists, form elements.
b. Don’t use tables.
c. Use css selectors to style. Isolate the top of the component (e.g. content block, category grid, … ) and use selectors to drill down to style.
d. Use css for validators.
For a good example check my new BV site: http://www.bestjigsawpuzzles.com.au/beta/.
(Ignore the super large images that appear every now and then. My auto-image-resize component failed to do its job.)
Why check the site: XHTML 1.1 Strict + CSS 2.1 compliant + liquid layout + full ul/li/div styling + columns + no tables + nice validations + content first (headers + columns are at the bottom of the file!) I think it’s a good example of what you can achieve with BV5 if you have the time + will to rewrite all the controls.
Regards,
Corneliu.