Web Development Blog by Jake Strawn

Delta Theme Settings API Conception

himerus — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:30:21 +0000

I've spent a lot of time lately working with the Omega theme, and really trying to get features lined out that I've had planned for some time now. I spoke on many of those desired features during my presentation at DrupalCamp Montreal, and wanted to be able to really get some of those important features integrated prior to DrupalCampNYC coming up in December when I might have the chance to speak again on the Omega theme.

I recently had a quick blog entry on what those feature plans for Omega would be for my own purposes, and to document those features outside of my presentation. I created issues in the issue queue for Omega at Drupal.org, and then posted information on those here. The list of features that I had planned for the theme that relate to this post were:

Design4Drupal 2010 - Boston Camp Website Design Contest

himerus — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:15:24 +0000

While D4D2010 - Boston is still a nice long way off in June of next year (exact dates, venue still TBD), Susan MacPhee and I among others are starting to put the wheels in motion to make this a great event, and top what was a fantastic start in 2009 to further grow the Drupal design community.

This time around we will be using the DrupalCamp L.A. model created by This by Them, and take some lessons that we've seen from DrupalCamp Montreal, and also the brand new DrupalCamp Austin site. We've seen some amazing work done recently on furthering the initiative of promoting Drupal camps and making them better and better, and we want to continue on that path. We also plan to use Acquia's free hosting for non-profit Drupal community websites.

In order to really promote this D4D2010 - Boston event, we want to be able to open up the design to the Drupal community, and allow all you amazing designers out there to submit a mockup design for the new D4D2010 - Boston site!

What we are looking for:

The goal is to have as many designers as possible submit their designs for the new D4D2010 - Boston site, and depending on the number of submissions we receive, pick out the top 5 designs or so, and then open up voting to the community to help us pick what design we move forward with.

Omega theme feature plans

himerus — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:02:46 +0000

I've just added several items to the Omega theme issue queue in order to document the planned features as I discussed at Drupalcamp Montreal.

TG Blog - Beta Blog theme concept

himerus — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:20:43 +0000

I just sat down for a bit today after posting my current projects & status and decided to spend a bit of time playing in photoshop on a more simple theme than I usually attempt to make, focusing on simple layout of data, and a clean, readable typography.

It might be a bit before I actually theme this out, but I think the concept is there, and clean. This is using the new 24 column layout provided by 960.gs, and will be an Omega sub-theme.

The TG Blog theme will provide customized node.tpl.php styling, and custom jQuery for various effects on the site, menu items, and service links. Custom preprocess_node() functionality would include customizing links, and creating the large comment bubble(s) with the comment count, as well as standardizing the node view in teaser or full mode.

Current projects on the table...

himerus — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:47:58 +0000

The following is a list of some of the things I'm currently working on. Some of these items are out in the open, some are currently still in planning, some are still completely conceptual. These are projects I'm working on in my spare time as time allows, and things I want to be able to give back to the Drupal community in one way or another.

The Omega theme

The Omega theme is my base theme, currently released in an Alpha state on Drupal.org. The Omega theme was something I decided to work on starting back in June after the first Design4Drupal camp, and after years of working with themes that never quite made me happy. I've pulled features from tons of the most popular themes in the Drupal community, and developed in my own ideas and concepts of what would be the "perfect" base theme for all my Drupal projects.

DrupalCamp Montreal 2009 Wrapup & Praise

himerus — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 16:01:37 +0000

As I mentioned the other day in my post more focused on my love for Drupal and its community, I recently had the great pleasure of attending DrupalCamp Montreal. This camp was only my second weekend event with the first being Design4Drupal in Boston last June, followed by my first Drupalcon in Paris in September.

Each of these 3 events, Boston, Paris & Montreal were actually my first visit to each of those cities respectively, which is quite odd, since the upcoming DrupalCamp NYC will also be my first trip there as well! I was able to present in Paris and in Montreal, and have really enjoyed becoming more involved as discussed in my earlier post.

Drupal Love

himerus — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:40:50 +0000

I had the great pleasure to attend yet another Drupal event this weekend in Montreal. DrupalCamp Montreal in my opinion (and I highly doubt I'm alone on this) Was a HUGE success. I've been so amazed in the past 6 months of actually attending camps, meetups, and the great fortune of presenting on the 960gs/Ninesixty theme at Drupalcon Paris. Every time I am able to go to one of these events, I get more and more drawn into the community aspect of Drupal, and gain a much better understanding of why Drupal is amazing, why the community is what makes it such a powerful option, and the only open source community that I've seen that is so passionate about what we do.

First open discussion on the "DrupalCamp Project"

himerus — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 19:11:14 +0000

Recently, at the latest meetup of the Boston Drupal user group, I posed an open question to the group regarding an idea I want to pursue that I feel will greatly help the Drupal community, and DrupalCamp organizers.

Since the event I've been working on an outline of goals for the project, and @sethcohn has set up an initial test site for us to start playing with. It will be after DrupalCamp Montreal that I'm able to turn some focus of my time to really getting into this project, and gathering up the resources to help, but the idea is exciting, and I really hope this can help be a very positive contribution to the community.

The following video was taken at the meetup, and is the discussion we had at the meetup regarding this idea.

Omega theme wrapup & 24 column support in 960gs

himerus — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:50:20 +0000

I've spent a good bit of time again on the Omega theme in preparation for my presentation at DrupalCamp Montreal, and getting closer to a much more stable release of the theme.

After taking a bit of a break from coding on the Omega theme, I was able to quickly locate some things that I didn't like the setup on, and figure out better ways to implement the same functionality. This also came from a couple of personal projects (nothing launched yet) that I was using the Omega theme for, and in both cases, learned a lot in how I needed the base theme to be more flexible to minimize coding needed to implement a variety of layouts.

DrupalCamp Montreal - Advanced 960gs theming with Omega

himerus — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 05:25:30 +0000

A follow up to my presentation at Drupalcon Paris on the 960gs in Drupal. I've touched on basic 960gs theming options with the ninesixty theme, and will delve further into creating a site that is easier for a non-technical site administrator to quickly change layouts through theme settings, while avoiding theming/layout issues. The Omega theme (drupal.org/project/omega) is currently still in dev, and will likely have a stable release in the next month after much testing on sub-theming and making sure the base framework of the module is complete. This base theme is however, my current "kitchen sink" of features for 960gs and pushing out a site quickly with a powerful theme on the backend. Session Outline (still in progress)

Presented on:

Sat, 2009-10-17

Location

McGill University

555 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest

Montreal, QC

Canada

Disabled