The big news is that the framework now supports Google Fonts - as you saw in the recent release of the Newstream template. This feature adds an extra layer to the visual aesthetic of your site and gives you the option to use google fonts for your logo, headings, body text or navigation elements. We will be updating the docs later today so be sure to check out the options available there in the next day or so.

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I'm happy to announce that the Newstream Joomla template is now available for all of our club members. New stream is a simple news portal or Magazine template with a bold color hierarchy that is perfect for creating an elegant Joomla magazine or Joomla news site. It has a wonderful K2 template that is perfect for ;multi-user blogs or magazine type layouts.

The template is a little late in delivery but we had to delay this release in order to make it compatible with the latest version of the Zen Grid framework. Version 1.05 of the framework includes a few new tasty features such as support for Google fonts, better implementation of the logo or the option to use Google font replacement for the logo as well as a handful of other smaller layout tweaks and refinements. I'll be spending the rest of today porting the existing templates to the new framework and will put together a special announcement regarding the release of the new version of the framework.

For now you can see the Newstream template in action on the demo site, or read about its features on the feature overview page or check out the indepth documentation on the doc page.

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Development on Newstream, our Joomla template release for July, is coming along nicely and tomorrow I'm planning on cracking open a fresh installation of K2 v2.3 to put it through its paces. I thought since the sub pages are starting to come together so nicely Id give you a snapshot of the simplicity that you should expect from the template.

The emphasis of this template is really on creating a clean and simple layout for you to use to highlight your content - mixing strong typography with lots of white space ... Anyway you can check the screen grab after the break.

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Ive just finalised the Joomla template design for July and its another gem from the Melbourne designer David Vuu. I think he has captured the bamboo aesthetic perfectly and delivered an amazingly simple but powerful news portal / magazine style theme with some thoughtful colour hierachies and interesting styling for the Slideshow3 module.

You can check out a full screenshot of the new template after the break.

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The process of upgrading non-zen or pre-framework templates is really pretty easy (in most cases) and we hope to have some tutorials coming soon to help you through that process if you need a design before it gets ported or if you feel like porting a live site to the new framework.

In the meantime club members can download the new version from our download area and take the new version for a spin.

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Im happy to announce the release of our June 2010 Joomla template. The original Grid proved to be one our most popular Joomla themes and Im hoping that Grid2 is a worthy successor.

Grid2 is built on the Zen Grid Framework and also comes bundled with a K2 template for use with the K2 cck component from joomlaworks.

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A few of you have been asking for more previews of the Grid2 Joomla template whose release is quite imminent, so I thought Id post a screenshot of the K2 Blog template that we are shipping with Grid2. Once again its a pretty simple blog type layout and the screenshot is using the minimal theme called white squares.

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The original Grid Joomla template we released back in July 2009 has proven to be one of the most popular joomla themes in our catalogue and so it was with a little trepidation that I started to rework that design a few months ago. This isnt the final result and is only a preview of the front page but I thought it might be helpful to give you a sneak peak at what we have in store for the June template release.

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An old favourite template of ours has just been given a new lease of life with an update for the Zen Grid Framework plus support for Tienda and K2. Simpleshop's focus is on simplicity so its a very minimal and mostly stripped back Joomla template that pulls on some common Tienda styling from our Shopfront release as well as the Avanti K2 template that we released back in January. Simpleshop is an incredibly fast and lightweight template that provides a perfectly clean slate for you to showcase your products on.

For more information check the Zen Simple Shop features page, the documentation page or view the Simpleshop on the site showcase.

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Shopfront is built on the Zen Grid Template Framework and is compatible with Tienda 0.4.4 +. Tienda is a free Joomla ecommerce solution created by Dioscouri.

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I cant count the number of times a design has changed in the week before a Joomla template release here at joomla Bamboo. It's almost like a part of my creative process, that the design doesn't really bed itself down until we start doing the coding.

As a short note that's pretty much what happened late last week for the impending Shop Front template release using the new Tienda component from Dioscouri. It means that the template will be delayed a few days but I think the wait is going to be worth it.

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Im happy to announce that our very popular Avanti template is now Zen Grid Framework compatible. We released Avanti back in January 2010 and since its been a most popular template by far we thought we would bump it to the top of the queue for the first of the recent templates to get ported to the new framework. If you are new to the Zen Grid framework you can read more about it here, or check out the knowledgebase here and of course view the Avanti template in all its glory via our template showcase.

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