Posted by Kristen Pol on July 24, 2012 at 8:07pm
Start:
2012-08-07 19:00 - 21:00 America/Los_Angeles Organizers:
Event type:
User group meeting
Our August Santa Cruz Drupal user group meeting will be Tuesday August 7th, 2012, from 7pm to 9pm.
Propose some topics below! If you'd like to present something, leave a comment!
Some things that I (Kristen) have been looking into a lot lately are responsive web design, typography, and general web design. I'm not a "designer" so I've been finding this interesting.
Comments
Well it is interesting, isn't
Well it is interesting, isn't it! I've been working with AdaptiveTheme (SASS version) and the responsive images and styles module (resp_img).
I'm liking it for an efficient workflow that facilitates the custom work we like to do.
I can compare this experience directly with building a responsive theme from scratch for WordPress (using SASS, compass and Susy fluid grids).
The scratch theme was a good exercise for getting used to working with SASS but I can now appreciate even more the helpers that AT has available for a quickstart without bloated markup and unneeded extras.
-- Julia v.
http://www.pfvdw.com
Zen 5
I used Zen 5 and resp_img on a small client site, the zen grids system is interesting. For whatever reason I've always shied away from AT, I like that Zen has minimal config in the Drupal GUI so I'm just focused on my text editor when working.
While I've never used https://github.com/canarymason/Survival-Kit it does have a nice listing of compass extensions you can build into whatever theme you're using, though you'll probably want to upgrade ruby to ensure you can support them all. I stumbled across http://jewelrybox.unfiniti.com/ a little late, but it's pretty neat.
Very cool, thanks! Love all
Very cool, thanks! Love all the tools that are coming out.
It's funny, I've avoided Zen for that same reason. I just assumed AT would be the lighter one. But I haven't looked at either Zen (or Omega or Fusion) since D6, so I will check out Zen 5. Compared to my past experience with Omega and Fusion(D6) I found the AT GUI config to be quite minimal and the bulk of my work was in the cascading media query file, which I liked very much.
Another favorite feature was the built in compass project, so I could get started right away without spending all my hours in setting up files. (I know, it's not hard, but this was convenient for me on a busy day)
I also like how AT has avoided the div div div div div div div problem apparent with Fusion. If Zen has done that now too, more the better!
I guess I'm getting over my resistance to accepting built in help from base themes. :)
Hopefully we'll have our nice updated site online soon.
-- Julia v.
http://www.pfvdw.com
Zen 5 and divitis
I saw John Albin Wilkins' presentation at Denver and besides Zen 5 and Zen grids, he was promoting the Fences project. ("Fences enclose fields.") The module removes all the default markup around any field and allows you to specify any HTML 5 block type tag to demarcate a particular field. It works with any theme, not just Zen.
I haven't used any of this yet, but it looked intriguing.
--Darryl Richman
http://darryl.crafty-fox.com
Fences etc
Fences is nice, but at least with the slight amount of time I've played with it, it'd need a little work to really stand on it's own. Being able to wrap a custom field in whatever element you want is great, but sometimes that isn't enough. Having a field in a ul may not help if you have a series of fields that would work well as lis etc (it'd be fun to run fences on a field collection as container, then fields as children)... not to mention I didn't see an easy way to style the label. That said, it is still useful and I'm excited to see where it'll end up.
There is still a little bit of divitis in Zen 5, but tbh I've just kind of accepted that any CMS where you aren't hand-coding your templates (ala Textpattern, Expression Engine, etc) will have a little bit of that because they can't assume how you'll use said templates.
I'll be out of town, but a round table responsive design group sounds fun. It'd be neat to do something barcamp style where we all present for 5-15 min on a recent theme/etc we've used sometime. :)
I like this idea for the
I like this idea for the meeting, although should we wait until you are back?
I've also had a chance also to check out the survivalkit package, and it is interesting to work with as well.
-- Julia v.
http://www.pfvdw.com
Good stuff :)
Hi all! Good stuff. I avoided Zen recently because it was bloated in Drupal 6 and had the negative margin stuff. My understanding was that the new Zen along with Zen Grids helps make it very lightweight. I'm considering it for my next starter theme to try it out (or I might do Omega).
So... we can certainly have a round-robin on responsive theming stuff. Or, if one of you wants to do a more "formal" presentation that's cool too. Speak up! (Re-reading it sounds like Julia might be up for that ;)
Also, Darren said he could give an overview about Node.JS if anyone is interested. I would be because I've heard the buzzword everywhere and would like to understand what it means ;)
Note that I will have to bring my kiddos along next week as my husband will be out of town (unless I can get a sitter). If they come, then I'll need to leave a little early (~8:30).
Contact: https://www.hook42.com/contact
Drupal 7 Multilingual Sites: http://www.kristen.org/book
Node.JS
If I understand it right, Node.js is a Javascript runtime you can install on your web server, with objects for creating web servers and clients. Unlike PHP and Drupal, the I/O they do is nonblocking, so you can, for example, issue multiple queries to some remote web services, and update your client's pages with the results when they come in (eg, a live Twitter feed). I would like to know more about it, too, and how it can be used from within Drupal.
--Darryl Richman
http://darryl.crafty-fox.com
.js & Drupal
I remember hearing about integration with backbone.js http://drupal.org/project/backbone at the last BADcamp, there seems to be an active compliment for node.js as well http://drupal.org/project/nodejs/.
Lots of commits, but also lots of issues. :)
Drupal developer needed for local company
Someone in our community is looking for a Drupal developer... here's the info:
===
We are looking for a drupal developer to work the following sites for us with a caring, enthusiastic but not-so-tech savvy visionary team:
www.heartmastery.com
Buddy.heartmastery.com
Looking for someone adventurous enough to take over a prior developers code!
===
The owner of the site will likely be at our meeting Tuesday so if anyone is interested, bring a business card ;)
Contact: https://www.hook42.com/contact
Drupal 7 Multilingual Sites: http://www.kristen.org/book