Drupal.geek.nz: Bevan on Drupal, Usability, Web, Open Source, Tech...

NZ Software Patents; Meeting With Lianne Dalziel, Commerce Committee Chairperson & Labour MP

Bevan — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:21:55 +0000

Today I had a long and very positive meeting about software patents and the NZ Patents Bill with Commerce Committee chairperson, Labour party's Lianne Dalziel, as well as Drupal-peers Dave Lane and Jonathan Hunt. Dalziel, Chr

Drupal meetup in Auckland New Zealand this Friday

Bevan — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:15:21 +0000

I'm going to be in Auckland this Friday and am meeting up with some other Drupalers to drink, dine and talk Drupal. Please see my post on groups.drupal.org for more details and to let us know if you're coming.

Drupal at Linux Conference Australasia, Wellington January 2010

Bevan — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:06:30 +0000

Linux Conference Australasia (aka LCA, linux.conf.au) will be in Wellington 18-23 January 2010 – 6 and a half months from now. This presents opportunities for the NZ Drupal community to;

Promote Drupal in the wider FLOSS community (which is good for business)
Run a DrupalCamp/Conference; which allows attendees to combine expenses if attending LCA, and organizers to share venue, admin, financial and other resources with LCA.
Just hang out and drink & talk Drupal! Or perhaps (talk) and (drink drupal)!? :)

Microsoft Tries To Defend NZ Government Contract Failure

Bevan — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:08:37 +0000

Kathryn Ryan of Radio NZ interviewed Don Christie, president of the NZ Open Source Society and Kevin Ackhurst, managing director of Microsoft NZ on Microsoft's failure to renew their multi-million dollar contract with the NZ government. The interviews and Kathryn's questions are intense and very interesting as Don Christie defends the government's choice to break out of a reliance on Microsoft's products, and Kevin Ackhurst tries to defend Microsoft's position, touting it as a success.

URGENT: Unlimited Software Patents In New Zealand. Act Now!

Bevan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:21:27 +0000

NZ government is about to pass a new Patents Act. In the 8-year review, they seemingly forgot to consider the impacts of patents on computer software! Submissions on the bill are being accepted till 2 July, so we need to move fast. Make a submission now!

Where will your grandkids be 60 years from now?

Bevan — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:27:40 +0000

It is not often I blog off topic, so I hope that you can appreciate how important this is, and spare a few minutes to save your own future, your children's and grandchildren's futures and home planet.

Would you just stand around and watch as your home burned down with your children and pets inside? No? So please don't stand around and watch while we destroy our home planet.

This December, world leaders, including New Zealand prim minister John Key, will meet in Copenhagen to decide what the world should do about climate change. John needs our support in order to do the right thing in Copenhagen. Please Sign On today. This is a great chance to make a difference.

UPDATED: Can't Add CSS, JS, RSS Icon Or Set Title Or Messages In Preprocess Page?

Bevan — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:10:17 +0000

UPDATE: Due to recent changes to our website the code snippet (the valuable part of this blog post) got accidentally lost. If you read this already, please come back to see the sample code. Thanks!
Often you want to add CSS files, scripts, feed icons or even set Drupal's page title from the theme layer. The most obvious place to call Drupal's functions for these tasks is probably in a page preprocess function. However calling the following Drupal API functions from a theme or module's NAME_preprocess_page() function often doesn't work;

SignOn.org.nz, By Greenpeace NZ

Bevan — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:48:24 +0000

Earlier this year Jenn, Owen and I worked on a proposal for Greenpeace NZ. CivicActions didn't win the contract, but the website has just launched.

Accessibility For Humans; Usability Of Websites For Screen Reader Users

Bevan — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 12:11:28 +0000

A graph from the article showing disabilities reported:

MS would have you believe otherwise and try to paint the picture back to front) and big win for NZ Government and NZ's IT industry.

Views Filter Blocks In Drupal 6

Bevan — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:09:49 +0000

Screenshot of Views 2 exposed filters in a block.

This video demonstrates how to setup Views 2 exposed filters as a block.

Vertical Tabs In Drupal 7 Core! How Open Source Does Usability – The Process

Bevan — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:14:25 +0000

Vertical tabs are finally in Drupal core!

Screenshot of vertical tabs on an 'Article Edit' page in Drupal 7.

Synchronized Mail, Contacts, Calendars Across iPhone, Google, Mail.app, iCal.app

Bevan — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 10:30:41 +0000

I have spent considerable time over the last year or so trying to get my data and systems set up to have email, contacts and calendars available both online and offline on both my main computer, my mobile device and online as a guest user on others computers. All the while keeping my inbox clean from spam and bulk mail, contacts synchronized and access my preferred user-interfaces and applications. I've recently been able to get this pretty close to perfect. In this article I will describe the technologies I use and how I've configured them to achieve this.

Young Hahn Proposes A Rule-Based Drupal Theme Layer

Bevan — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:59:10 +0000

While there were many great presentations at DrupalCon DC, Young Hahn's Limitations of the Drupal Theme Layer was the only one that blew me away.

Online Protest Successful; Internet Blackout NZ

Bevan — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:59:59 +0000

The online protest against changes to copyright law in New Zealand – aka Internet Blackout NZ – was successful in that it has resulted in a 4-week delay. It is expected that this will give the new New Zealand government enough time to reconsider the consequences of such a ridiculous law change, and most probably repeal the changes entirely. The NZ Herald has more details.

jQuery.dashboard() Plugin

Bevan — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 11:06:02 +0000

The jQuery.dashboard() plugin for jQuery provides a framework that makes it easy for web application developers to create highly configurable dashboard-like user interfaces (similar to iGoogle) in their web applications. Jump straight to the demo.

Internet Blackout NZ

Bevan — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:40:44 +0000

What happened to my blog?

Bevan — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:50:48 +0000

UPDATE

Internet Blackout NZ is thus far successful. We successfully delayed changes to Section 92A for 4 weeks! I expect, and we are all hopeful, that this will give the new government time to fully understand their #$@%-up, and dismiss the law change entirely.

The original post follows, and here is what drupal.geek.nz looked like during the week of February 16-23:

Click for full size

Gmail Offline Is Here

Bevan — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:16:20 +0000

Gmail offline is finally here! As per my message on twitter; It's fast – even better than Gmail online. Faster than desktop apps. The internet revolution is here!
You'll need to enable Gmail "Experimental features" first. I've forgotten how to do this, but I think it's in the admin "cpanel" for Google Apps for Your Domain. I'm not sure about Google-proper Gmail.
Once you have that;

Translation Links For Semi-Multi-Lingual Drupal 6 Websites

Bevan — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:21:01 +0000

I created the Translation Links module as a way of making translations of nodes easily accessible on partially translated multi-lingual websites.

"Drupal For Education And E-Learning" Book Review

Bevan — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 22:28:01 +0000

Drupal for Education and E-learning

How Many Different Web Browser Versions Can You Open Simultaneously?

Bevan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 03:23:12 +0000

Feriana.co.nz Drupal 6 Showcase

Bevan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:18:09 +0000

I recently finished Feriana.co.nz, a simple Drupal 6 site for my fiancée and her handbag business. It uses CCK, Views and Panels 2 alpha, as well as ImageField, ImageCache and Lightbox2 modules. I also wrote Image Themer and Views Themer modules, which I contributed to the Themer package and plan to abstract in to re-usable solutions in my next Drupal 6 theming project which I start this week. I will also be demonstrating these modules at the Advanced Theming Techniques session (if it gets in – Go Vote!). You browse the still-very-alpha code for these modules in Drupal's CVS repository.

Drupal Success; What Would Drupal Do?

Bevan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 14:00:08 +0000

Now that I have been a full-time Drupal Developer for a couple of years, and a part-time Drupal developer for a year before that, I am beginning to recognize recurring patterns and problems in Drupal projects and people's experiences with Drupal. This is a report on my experiences, and a summary of learned lessons and recommendations for those entertaining the idea of a financially-driven Drupal project.

Improving Node Forms With Vertical Tabs

Bevan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 13:23:47 +0000

Vertical Tabs module by Dmitri Gaskin is a Drupal module-ification of prototype work I did for the usability of Drupal's node forms, and was inspired partly by ideas in the discussion and design process of Views 2 UI – which was all part of my Season of Usability project.

It's Not "User Testing"

Bevan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:54:15 +0000

It's not User Testing!
A number of times recently I have heard folk in the Drupal community and elsewhere talk about User Testing. While many people use this term and it is not strictly incorrect it is misleading and also far from correct A better term to use is Usability testing or UI testing. Here's why;
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Usability Of Car Stereos

Bevan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 12:26:51 +0000

For a long time I have wondered how the teams that design car stereos can fail so miserably at making car stereos easy to use. The function of a car stereo is not complicated, and there are few tasks that need to be considered in the design of a car stereo interface. Approximately in order of importance these tasks are;

Third Party MacBook Batteries Compared

Bevan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:56:26 +0000

I recently needed to purchase two replacement batteries for Apple laptops. One for a MacBook 13-inch white, and one for a MacBook Pro 17-inch. I decided to purchase third-party batteries since the saving was about 30% and they came with a 12-month warranty. While I had the original and third-party replacement batteries in one place, I decided to snap some photos so that others can see the differences between Apple's replacement batteries and third-party ones.

The photos are on flickr;

Version Controlling Drupal Settings Files

Bevan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:39:53 +0000

One of the problems almost every Drupal project or team comes across shortly after adding their Drupal site to a version control system such as Subversion, is whether to version-control the settings.php file or not.
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Do It Right The First Time; Do Not Use Microsoft-Contrived Version Targeting

Bevan — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:11:08 +0000

Microsoft announced in January that Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) would be standards-compliant, but only if you included a special meta tag or http header indicating that the page should be rendered in standards compliance mode. The uproar from the standards community led Microsoft to change the default behavior of IE8. Now IE8 will render all pages in standards mode by default, unless you specify otherwise with the X-UA-Compatible meta tag or http header. Interestingly, the Microsoft followers did not seem to feel short-changed as the standards advocates had.