I like the new look, with its flat colors and additional negative space. It seems more current, as excessive gradients seem to be falling out of style in web design lately—just as browser support for them is starting to catch up. It’s definitely easier to find what you’re looking for on the new site, so the new navigational structure is a success.

The design looks great, but I find the switch to WooCommerce to be the most interesting. Not only is WooThemes “eating their own dog food,” but the fact that the largest and most known supplier of commercial WordPress themes is using it is good to know for anyone looking into e-commerce solutions.

We’ve re-designed. Everything. [WooThemes]

If you’re not using one of the supported tumbleblog themes, they have also built a WordPress plugin that will add the tumbleblog functionality. (I may have to take a look at the code one day to see how they have it set up. I assume it probably involves Custom Post Types or Custom Taxonomies somehow.)

I like this idea. It would be great if you could continue to use the normal post type, but add in some mixed media with the tumbleblog plugin (for links and the occasional podcast).

We are excited that we can give something substantial back to the core after a somewhat hesitant decision to GPL license our themes a few months ago. This proves to us, and hopefully others, how the GPL license should be correctly utilized to benefit others.

It’s certainly an interesting move. Judging by the screenshots, it will be a feature that will be appreciated by much of the WordPress user base. It sounds as if the decision was made because the WordPress team was planning a similar feature for 3.0, and it made more sense to use something that had already been developed than to have two competing ways to handle the same thing, with one being “official.”

Canvas is a “blank slate” theme, with minimal styling, that you customize by either creating a child theme and using hooks, or by  editing colors, background images, etc. through an admin menu. So it’s kind of a blend of Thesis and frameworks like Thematic, Hybrid, and Carrington.

I think it has a good chance at competing with Thesis. The default design is better, and the pricing scheme is much more attractive. $70 and you can use the them on as many sites as you want, and it’s even GPL. Thesis, on the other hand, costs $87 for a single-site license that requires a credit link in the footer. Oh, and when you buy Canvas you get two more free WooThemes with the purchase…

That means you can now grab 3 Standard Package themes for only $70 and a whopping 4 Developer Package themes for $150.

I think that’s a pretty good deal for WordPress themes of the quality WooThemes usually releases.

The icons seem pretty good to me, and there certainly are a lot of them. The set seems to be more targeted for general user interface use rather than being yet another collection of social media button graphics. (Not that social media icon sets are a bad thing…)