Beautytips module requires the excanvas library for Internet Explorer support. But it's tricky getting drush_make to download and install the zipped version provided by the excanvas project because there's no containing folder and drush_make seems to expect one. Read more »
Many moons ago, I used Apple's Quartz Composer to create a screensaver for OSX, featuring our friend the Druplicon and the feed from Drupal Planet.
I thought it was about time I shared it. Read more »
I've you've fallen under the spell of mig5 (aka Miguel Jacq) and moved your Drupal deployment workflow to drush, drush_make, Aegir and git you might have been scratching your head over how to carry over your normal development workflow. Here's four tips to help you along. Note that all commands presume a Debian/Ubuntu style OS. Read more »
I came across Andy Ford's modified AutoCompletion.plist for MacRabbit's CSSEdit today, and not being entirely convinced of all Andy's modifications I decided to make my own.
The main differences are: I've moved the browser specific and CSS3 properties into their own sections, added a comment above each of those sections and removed the font-family values. Generally I add font stacks from an external source like code style's font stack builder, so these font names make no sense to add, especially without spaces (that's just asking for trouble)!
But thanks go to Andy for writing up the tip, it's a handy addition to CSSEdit while we wait for MacRabbit to finish playing with Espresso and get around to updating CSSEdit.
Attached is a patch file with my modifications to the original AutoCompletion.plist.
There may not be many posts on this blog but one of the most popular has always been “Desktop clock with geektool” (possibly because Google directs people here looking for actual physical desktop clocks, but still). Read more »
I installed the PECL uploadprogress PHP extension on my Debian Lenny development server for the Drupal filefield module just before Psynaptic's excellent roundup of how it install it on just about everything. But it turns out to be a lot easier on the Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) development server I'm switching too:
Then add the "extension=uploadprogress.so" to your php.ini, in my case I'm using a local ini file rather than modifying the apt supplied php.ini:
Reload the Apache config and you're done.
I attempted to respond to comments on Moshe Weitzman’s blog with a comment, but it looks like it didn’t post, so I’ll elaborate here instead. Moshe made an excellent post detailing some frontend designer complaints about Drupal markup “Highlights from Design 4 Drupal” and some of the constructive attempts to improve things such as Studio theme, Skinr module and the 960 theme. The following comments however seem to be bitchy and ill informed, and even downright hurtful (see Merlin’s post “views-panels-economy-of-front-end-code-and-classes-and-namespace”).
Now I love clean light semantic markup as much as the next code nazi but the comments by peach of alldrupalthemes.com and Christopher Calicott seem to stem from lack of experience and ignorance.
“…because core output functions are so easy to override, but mainly it’s Views that outputs terrible code” – peach
Views is just as themable and easy to override as core, if not more so.
“To be honest, I never really got the developers’ confusion or reluctance about economy of code for front end” – Christopher Calicott
Drupal developers aren’t reluctant, they like light code, and it’s not developers that are confused – it’s you Christopher, you’re just not seeing the big picture of code running on thousands of sites, being used by people with varying levels of technical expertise.
“I would love to help out with cleaning it up if someone could guide me through the backend process. Same goes for panels.” – peach
I’ve overridden views many a time only to find that I end up adding back so many wrappers and classes I might as well have not bothered in the first place. All those divs and classes are there for a reason. To assume that you can easily ‘clean up’ the markup used on tens of thousands of sites whilst simultaneously admitting that you have no idea of the backend process is either extremely naive or massively arrogant – quite possibly both! It’s easy to take one site and craft light semantic markup, doing the same for ten thousand sites at the same time all with different content…? Try to keep everyone happy and you’ll end up with a generic kitchen sink approach, there’s no other way.
For me this is part of a larger debate, covered by Dave Shea’s post Redundancy vs. Dependency which deals with CSS but could be applied to markup and even programming code. Views markup is very redundant (and that’s a good thing for views.module to be) whereas you’re looking for highly dependent markup (which may well be a good thing for a specific site or theme) there is always a tension between the two.
As fun as it can be to bitch about about things it’s really not constructive. So please, lets keep it nice and keep working towards constructive solutions.
Here it is, the obligatory ‘this site is now on Drupal’ post. I’ve merged my neglected Drupal based blog with the main perlucida.com site, redesigned and refreshed the content. It’s taken nearly three years.
Why so long? It’s certainly been a busy and tiring three years – I moved house, my second child was born (and preceded to spend his entire first year waking 3 to 5 time a night), and of course every time a new customer project comes along perlucida.com goes on the back-burner. But that’s not why it took so long, really it comes down to project management.
Going away from a project for a while and then coming back with fresh eyes is usually a great thing. But being forced to do it repeatedly meant that each time I picked up the project again I was seeing flaws in what I’d done in the previous batch of work. Cue constant redesigns and reworking, regular incorporation of new idea’s and generally breaking project management rules. The blocks (visible at the end of pages like this one) are one of the few elements unchanged since I designed them in 2006 – and also one of the things I like least now!
There are still some things on my to-do list, but right now this site is live on Drupal and I’m loving it.
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