Drupal 4 Designers

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Mon, 03/08/2009 - 15:12 — ipwa

Date:

Thu, 20/08/2009 - 18:00 - 21:00

*** Update: ***

Schedule

Beginner: - Introduction to Drupal: a brief explanation of exactly what Drupal is and a showcase of beautiful Drupal sites. (Peter Brownell) - Limitations of the Drupal theming layer: Some of the common "mistakes" designers can make when working with Drupal (Nicolas Borda) - Drupal Theme Concepts: A gentle introduction to theming Drupal (Robert Castelo) Intermediate: - MySQL: A presentation of Drupal's database of choice from Sun microsystems (Mark Baker) - Themes from the bottom up: A demonstration and Q&A session on how to build a theme from scratch (Peter Brownell) - Maps: They don't have to look like google maps. openstreetmap, cloudmade and map styles (Andrew Larcombe) Advanced: - From PSD 2 Drupal: Some techniques and tools for making high quality Drupal themes from a Photoshop design (Nicolas Borda) - Form Follows File: Introduction to painless theming (Django Beatty) - Open Q&A session: Session to answer any questions from designers and open discussion about where Drupal theming is going (Peter Brownell, Nicolas Borda, Django Beatty, Anthony Hunt, etc.) Design has been a particularly hot topic for Drupal this year, and Drupal 4 Designers aims to engage the wider design community in that discussion. Web and graphic designers who are curious, and perhaps a bit scared of Drupal can find out how easy it really is to work with Drupal, and get of to a good start by picking up some best practises. Experienced Drupal designers can share their knowledge, and improve their skills with some new tricks and tips. This event will be held at Sun Microsystems from 6:00pm to 9:00pm, Thursday 20th of August. Designers, themers, developers, and Drupal enthusiasts of all levels are welcome! If you work at a web design/development agency that uses Drupal make sure you tell your designers about the event.

Confirmed Sessions

Drupal Theme Concepts: A gentle introduction to theming Drupal by Robert Castelo
Limitations of the Drupal theming layer: Some of the common "mistakes" designers can make when working with Drupal (inspired by Young Hahn's article) by Nicolas Borda
From PSD 2 Drupal: Some tips on making a Drupal theme from a Photoshop or GIMP design by Nicolas Borda
Maps: They don't have to look like google maps. openstreetmap, cloudmade and map styles, by Andrew Larcombe
Form Follows File: Introduction to painless theming, by Django Beatty

********** --- ************ There are many ways to get involved in this event. If you would like to make a presentation, please have a look at the suggested presentations below, or work on your own. If you have a good idea for a presentation you'd like to attend, please post a comment about this, so we can add the idea to the list.

Suggested Sessions

Creating and maintaining a theme in drupal.org: A look at different kinds of CVS setups and their pros/cons
theming & security!
Drupal Designers Future: The future landscape for designers working with Drupal
960gs: Best practices and examples of Drupal themes using the 960 grid system.
From Wordpress 2 Drupal: The ins and outs of quickly turning a Wordpress theme into Drupal.

Inspiration

A big thanks to our sponsors Sun Microsystems and Code Positive for making this possible.

Website:

http://d4d.eventbrite.com/

Where

Location:

Sun Microsystems, Regis House, King William St, London EC4R 9AN

Map:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=King%20William%20St,+London,+Greater%20London+EC4R...

Groups:

Drupal London

Comments

Tue, 04/08/2009 - 08:03 — mysty

Be there or be Mondrian

Have really been looking forward to this. It's going to be great!

No effort will be spared as I try and make the start time :)

Thank for everyone putting this together.

Tue, 11/08/2009 - 11:00 — shrenster

Anymore Tickets available ?

Hi All, Would like to come this event but there are no more tickets left. I checked yesterday morning and there were 87 tickets left. As I didn't have time to register at that piont I thought I would leave it until later in the day. Tried around 5ish and all the tickets were sold out ..... ;-( Does anyone know if more tickets will be issued or where I can get 1 from ? Thanks ...

Tue, 11/08/2009 - 11:06 — Robert Castelo

Event Sold Out

All 140 are gone for this event.

However, we'll send an email to all attendees the day before it's on asking them to cancel their ticket if they can't make it.

Usually there are a few returns, so 10 - 20 tickets should become available. If you contact Nicolas he'll put you on the waiting list.

Tue, 11/08/2009 - 12:43 — shrenster

Finger's crossed.....

Ok will do. Thanks Robert.

Fri, 14/08/2009 - 15:57 — ipwa

Waiting list

The waiting list is really long now, so if you can't make it by any reason, please make sure you contact us so we can give your ticket to someone else. As Robert said we will send an email soon to all attendees to see if there are any cancelations. We are hoping this will turn into a regular event so anyone that doesn't get to make, hopefully will have a chance in the near future :)

Fri, 21/08/2009 - 08:54 — eff_shaped

drupal 4 designers - feedback? Group?

Are you setting up a feedback thread, or new group for this? Thanks for running it last night. eff_shaped

Fri, 21/08/2009 - 09:42 — codeangle

Are you setting up a feedback thread, or new group for this?

What do you mean by this please find time to explain to me.

Fri, 21/08/2009 - 08:59 — dokumori

Video is now available at archive.org

I've just finished uploading the video to archive.org http://www.archive.org/details/drupal4designers My Flip Video ran out of battery so I only got the two sessions by Nicolas :( I had lots of fun meeting people and learning about theming. Thanks Nicolas for organising the event! Well done! Thanks also to Sun and Code Positive for making the event happen!

Sat, 22/08/2009 - 14:21 — webopius

Thanks for posting these

Thanks for posting these videos - very informative presentations. The YSlow addin was a new one for me - trying it out now!

Fri, 21/08/2009 - 10:11 — ipwa

Thanks to everyone

Thanks a lot guys for your kind words and a big thanks to the presentors and everyone that came. I will make a post here when I get some of the slides of the presentations sent to me, and we can use that post to have a feedback thread. Cheers!

Fri, 21/08/2009 - 13:23 — mojomandd

Thanks for a highly informative evening guys

Got some really interesting stuff out of the talks last night. I'm looking forward to the next meeting. Hopefully the word will get around and we can redress the imbalance between devs and designers attending. The advanced Q&A did swerve a little too close to hardcore development for my fragile design-led sensibilities! I'd also be really interested to see whether there is any kind of consensus as to best-practice Drupal development. There was a definite tension between those who opted for the more simplistic structure reminiscent of a basic HTML site and the other (more reductivist) camp who prefer to hook in the styling primarily through the functions. As a designer at heart I'm far more likely to wrap my head around the former method but I'm open to a convincing argument that would convert me to the latter. If it isn't ugly as sin and doesn't require the command line by default I'm willing to give it a bash!

Sat, 22/08/2009 - 14:10 — Django Beatty

Like most things Drupal there's more than one way to do it

I don't think there's a tension but like most things Drupal there's more than one way to do it and you can choose what suits you. Current best practice is for modules to provide template implementations (http://drupal.org/node/165706), but it's not mandatory to use them. The function-led approach to theming is more traditional within Drupal development and may be better suited to smaller outfits where the core skill is php. But if you look outside Drupal to other frameworks and languages, a template approach is more standard in web development generally. For example, I've architected major sites where it's usual to find hundreds of template files after a few years. This turns out to be a very good fit for the workflow of a larger commercially-driven organisation with various levels of dedicated staff, and where pointing designers to a library of php functions would be a non-starter. But for some clients, template files are going to be harder to maintain - so it's just about being sensitive to these requirements. Functionally, these methods are pretty much equivalent. It's only with Drupal 6 that the template approach has become viable by the removal of any significant performance penalty and the facility for templates to be organised in subdirectories, so a template-led approach is fairly new to Drupal. I wanted to highlight this option as I've seen situations where designers (and developers) new to Drupal hadn't realised that it can be approached in a similar way to MVC frameworks they might have worked with before. But as I said there are a number of ways of working and you should be able to find one that works for your situation. (And there are also other options available - such as Contemplate, where the theming is entered in browser forms and stored on the database by default.)

Wed, 26/08/2009 - 19:40 — mojomandd

There's more than one way...

Thanks for the reply Django. I thoroughly enjoyed your talk and experienced a minor moment of clarity when things all started to fall into place, especially with Devel. I'm certainly not trying to be contentious in suggesting there was a 'tension' - I was simply struck by the array of differing approaches available to the neophyte templateer. The templating approach looks as though it will work for me as it fits neatly within my current workflow although I take your point about considering the clients requirements. In the end it should come down to what is best for those who are going to be using the site in the long term. I'd be interested to see a talk on Contemplate at an upcoming meeting as I've heard a lot about it but not yet had a moment to try it out.

Sat, 22/08/2009 - 14:01 — Django Beatty

Form Follows File

Just put my talk up - http://www.slideshare.net/Adub/form-follows-f...

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