Posted by obiwan on November 27, 2007 at 5:53am
Start:
2007-11-27 19:30 - 21:00 US/Central It's our last meetup of the year, so I hope everyone can make it out! John Jesus will be showing how he has used some of drupal's community features on PlanoWestLacrosse.org
We're meeting a little further south for this meetup...in Addison. Hopefully this will be closer for some group members. Event details here...
If you haven't already, reminder to join our site, DrupalJedi.com, and upload your picture, connect with others in the group, etc. Again, if you want to add some modules or something to the site, let me know and I can make you an administrator.
So see you Tuesday night Nov 27th at Dunn Bros in Addison at 7:30 pm.
See you there!
Lee
Comments
What We Shared
The Dallas Drupal User Group met and discussed many varied topics on Nov. 27.
It struck me that we are an active, fast growing group who sincerely desire to help each other and
learn from each other.
There were 5 knowledgeable members in attendance feverishly feeding off each other's ideas and experiences.
I list drupal related links inside this note. For non-drupal related links, see the blog at our group site
http://www.drupaljedi.com.
Presentation:
John presented his http://www.planowestlacrosse.org Drupal site. On it, he creates weekly newsletters and
sends them to the e-mail subscribers (no membership required). He also has a gallery of photo images. He
even plays a video from a youtube link. He displays a calendar of events.
Some of the modules used on the site: Thickbox login, embedded media field (for Youtube),
related links, calendar api, CCK, Date API, SimpleNews, and various modules for the image gallery,
John said he learned how to do the image gallery by watching Rothman's screencast available here:
http://drupal.org/node/145783
linode.com was hosting this site and another one off the same Drupal install.
For those who hadn't seen it yet, Dustin showcased his site veyes.com which heavily makes use of Flash. Even though it is a Drupal
site, you would never guess. The site makes fancy use of some neat jquery actions such as accordion
menus, context dropdown menus with right mouse click, and "toggling" of left images.
Modules of interest that were discussed:
ReCaptcha was great at eliminating spam. You can find a forum discussion here:
http://drupal.org/node/150381
and you can find the reCaptcha module here:
http://drupal.org/node/151588
Custom Cookie Crumbs module was also said to be good.
Carousel was said to have some limitations on flash.
SimpleNews was said to handle generation of newsletter in an easy to use
manner. One feature especially liked was that it archived the newsletter on the site.
A thickbox login module was said to work well as a "pop-up" dialog box for login.
"Unconference"
Some members discussed attending an upcoming barcamp in January in Bryan, Texas. Lee, the Dallas, TX group
leader may volunteer to lead a Drupal discussion.
Books
If you are interested in doing javascript using jquery which is used in Drupal,
jquery in action can be pre-ordered at amazon.com.
Transcending CSS was recommended as a way for a developer/programmer to understand design
from a graphics artist perspective.
If you are interested in how the author of jquery John Resig sees javascript, read his book
Pro JavaScript Techniques.
Several of us have the book Pro Drupal Development.
Resources:
Screencasts at http://theartlab.net/podcast/drupal-school had been viewed and benefitted several in the group.
Mozilla addons were recommended for general web development.
Jquery scripts for accordions and fixing the png transparency problem in IE6.
For non-drupal related links, see the blog at our site
http://www.drupaljedi.com.
NEXT
Our next meeting is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 22 in Deep Ellum.
Pizza was mentioned! Save the date. Anyone near or in Dallas, TX who wants
to learn and share Drupal would benefit from attending.
We had a volunteer to create a google map on our drupal site http://www.drupaljedi.com
to "pin" all member locations. The map should help us target geographic locations for meetings convenient
to our group members.
Awesome notes
Great notes Stephanie,
I really need to read a book on Javascript. I've been hacking my way through it thusfar.
javascript book
I run across what seems to be a good javascript book on this site:
http://www.quirksmode.com/
Peter-Paul Koch has a chapter excerpt so you can "try before you buy". Check if he gives the information at the level you need. He also has the introduction which tells you the type of javascript examples he uses throughout the book.
Books depend on your level of knowledge and experience and the depth to which you want to learn a subject. Which is why there's no such thing as "one size fits all".