Notes by:
Nick Young
North Carolina State University
DrupalCon 2011: Chicago: Day One
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Opening Keynote
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* Drupal is 10 years old
* Drupal 7 history
o 3 year process (feb 08->jan 11)
o 1000 contributors
o 30 people responsible for more than half of Drupal 7
* What was done well
o test driven development
o updated development documentation
o usability team
o development snapshots
o accessibility team
* what can be done better
o lack of empowerment
o lack of release cycle predicability
o not much high bandwidth communication
o need better priorities
o too many critical bugs
o performance enhancements seemed like an afterthought
* Drupal 8
o development branch opening today/now (march 2011)
o contributions to Drupal 8 must pass these criteria/initiatives
+ performance
+ accessibility
+ usability
+ documentation
+ testing
+ no critical bugs
o bigger patches into core is the plan
o Goal == at no time should there be more than 15 critical bugs
o for each initiative, appoint a lead/owner
+ good organizer
+ good communicator
+ team builder
+ good architect
* What is Drupal?
o same song again :-)...make me feel proud
* if we were to start today, we’d build Drupal for mobile devices first, and desktop/static devices second
* Drupal 8 needs to be able to output to all devices...ie:
o html
o xml
o flash front end
o html5
o css 3
o native applications built on web services
* multi-device publishing, right now important for organizations, but will be important for individuals by the time drupal 8 comes out
simplicity and power -- making something more powerful but stil simple to run/access
Sites using Drupal
Grammy.com
US House of Representatives - 520 websites running different things (wordpress, .net, java, drupal, anything and everything). Are now standardizing on Drupal as a platform, and moving all 520 sites. Scale is important.
Symantec Connect --- community website built on Drupal. They outsourced support to their community of users and partners.
Dries interviewed large drupal users, and their main "pain points" were:
configuration management
content staging
"The future is more than just features"
Replacing devices with entire ecosystems
The winning platform will have a winning ecosystem that comes with it/around it
Investment is continued to be needed in Drupal.org, git etc
Summary:
--different process
--feature priorities
--ecosystem
Q&A section:
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Session 1: Intro to Module Development
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Session URL: http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/introduction-module-development
Presenter: Ezra Barnett Gildesgame -- http://twitter.com/ezrabg
Primarily for people who know that hooks exist, but don't really know what they are or how to work with them.
Don't start from scratch...duh
need:
.info file
.module file
optional:
.install file
.inc files
dpm() ---> use to display any variable on the screen (string or array)
-- just pass any variable to it, and it will print it out.
devel module --> use to see inside what's being processed
use api.drupal.org to find the appropriate hook
variable_get() ---retrieve a site-wide variable (which are stored on every page request)
variable_set() --- set a site-wide variable (which are stored on every page request)
t() --- translate interface text
hook_menu() --- map a function to a callback -- makes Drupal run a particular function
comment_notify module has a good example of hooks
func_get_args() --- see what arguments are passed to a particular function
--- ie: compare arguments passed on a successful operation versus an unsuccessful one
debug_backtrace() --- if you have no idea what's going on.
ie: dpm(debug_backtrace(), 'backtrace from whatever function');
Resources:
GVS API Cheat Sheet: http://bit.ly/info/Mo7P8
[Slides will be posted/tweeted after the session]
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My thoughts
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good presentation, good mix of detail/code, while keeping it applicable to the diverse audience.
good to know that the methods he employed are consistent with the way i've read on the docs/tutorial sites.
learned about new things that can help ( dpm() )
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Session 2: Rockin’ HTML5 with Drupal
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Session URL: http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/rockin-html5-drupal
Presenter: Jen Simmons -- http://twitter.com/jensimmons
Created Bartik (the new default theme for Drupal 7)
http://jensimmons.com
Slides at http://jen.cm/h5
* ??? history lesson on innovation ???
* moral: need the first thing before you can have the next thing
* Web 1.0 --- find something, read, look at images, click links to find more things
* Web 2.0 --- comment, sign in, add text, photos, video, audio, connect to other users, buy things, participate, not just read
* Web 3.0 --- html5, pushing more limits
* HTML 5:
* semantic markup
* simplified document head
* in Drupal: $head, $styles, $scripts
* new structural elements -- section, aside, article, nav, outlining
* ARIA: Landmark roles
* http://html5doctor.com
* Drupal 7 doesn't play completely nice with html5 just yet (input filters don't allow some of the html5 code yet...all doc'd in the issue queue so far)
* mobile devices take advantage of attributes/markup to show appropriate keybaord for example
* <video>, <canvas>, <audio>
* web storage
* project.mahemoff.com/sql.html
* Web SQL, Index DB
* Geolocation possibilities
* Offline storage/caching
* Drag/Drop capabilities
* ie: draggable=true
* Web Workers
* split up the process of loading a page based on client capabilities
* Web Sockets
* bidirectional communication
* http://html5demos.com/web-socket
* Communication & Messaging
* HTML5 is backwards compatible
* except Netscape Navigator, Firefox 2, IE4 :-)
* http://caniuse.om
* http://drupal.org/project/html5_tools (module)
* http://drupal.org/project/html5_base (theme)
* checkout "modernizer"
* http://drupal.org/project/modernizer
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My thoughts
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* seems like something i can pretty much ignore (given current time constraints and existing projects), until a project comes up that "needs" html5 features
*
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Session 3: Webform 3, the survey tool for Drupal
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Session URL: http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/webform-3-survey-tool-drupal
Presenter: Nathan Haug -- http://twitter.com/quicksketch
* conditional fields
* save drafts, resume later
* webform-enable any content type
* webform 2 just created a "webform" content type
* basic views support
* not "fantastic" yet
* much better data integrity
* Form builder integration
* http://drupal.org/project/form_builder
* APIs
* module provided components
* save insert update delete submissions
* hooks for prebuilt select lists
* renderables used in forms, emails, and viewing submissions
* takes advantage of Drupal 7 having jQueryUI built in (datepicker etc)
* Pay Module + WebForm 3.x
* accept credit card payments
* + webform pay bridge module
* no enforced SSL
* http://drupal.org/project/webform_pay
* http://drupal.org/project/pay
* http://drupal.org/project/donate
* options element module
* http://drupal.org/project/options_element
* Mime Mail Module
* allows sending HTML emails to users
* http://drupal.org/project/mimemail
* integrates with WebForm
* you can make any webform into a block for use on the entire site
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My thoughts
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* definitely interested in this as a possible replacement for limesurvey.
* less software to support (just Drupal instead of Drupal + limesurvey for the same end result)
* definitely interested in this as a possible solution for accepting credit card payments for nc state
* should use this for the PRR website, for the "is this PRR useful" or "is this PRR correct" etc
* create webform, create block, make display on just the appropriate content types
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Session 4: Advanced Accessibility in Drupal
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Session URL: http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/advanced-accessibility-drupal
Presenter: Katherine Lynch
Same presenter as last year:
http://sf2010.drupal.org/conference/sessions/accessibility-drupal-6-and-drupal-7-write-accessible-modules-and-themes
* examples about seizures
* how to deal with them
* people are uneducated about how to deal with it correctly
* Amazon.com
* guidelines are in place for a reason
* the way a crisis was handled caused more problems than the actual complaint
* Accessibility and the Law
* Target.com - lawsuit
* AOL.com - lawsuit
* Priceline & Ramada -- avoided lawsuits
* Penn State - lawsuit on behalf of blind students
* university was not contacted about the problem until the complaint was filed
* Drupal
* has the capability of producing accessible sites
* Drupal 7 overlay issues
* Password strength indicator
* Color contrast, screen reader issues
* D7AX Pledge
* Cognitive Disabilities
* problem solving, memory, distraction etc
* Motor Disabilities
* hands, arms, switches, mouth sticks, speech recognition etc
* HTML 5
* not standardized yet
* can be used and be accessible
*
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My thoughts
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* took a really long time to get to the "advanced" information...15 minutes of background information
* a lot of information about accessibility, not so much about Drupal + accessibility
* pretty much the same feeling i had as last year:
* http://oitdesign.ncsu.edu/2010/04/20/drupalcon-2010-day-one/ (section 2)