Better ways to evaluate themes before installation

When using the New Theme button from my dashboard, there seems to be no way to navigate from a search result thumbnail of a theme, to the reviews of the theme. Seeing the number of stars is helpful, but reading the reviews would be a time-saver in many cases, since whatever prompted a poor review might not be a factor for me.

Also, the default text that displays in the preview includes some bullet lists, but the lines are all very short. I’ve noticed that many themes format lists badly, with the second line lining up with the bullet rather than with the text of the first line. This isn’t evident unless the line is long enough to wrap. There should also be something displayed in every widget area, so that the person previewing can see where they are.

And, some themes provide their own content for the preview rather than using the default text, so we don’t even get to see all the different text entities. I’d like to see a user-activatable preview mode that insists on using the standard preview text.

I’d like to also encourage theme developers to add some layout options to the Customize panel, if their theme has layout options. Any important options that are not evident in the preview, should also be mentioned in the description. E.g. if display of tagline is off by default, disclosing whether it can optionally be enabled. In what ways can we customize this theme? Crucial info for deciding whether to continue considering the theme.

And, it would be great if there were a way to get clipping of header images to work during live preview.

All of these would ease the laborious process of evaluating themes before activating.