Blog
Path checking in Drupal 6
Posted: Fri, 08/02/2008 - 07:33
Filed under: Drupal
The menu system in Drupal 6 has been completely rewritten, but most of the changes are under the hood.
There are a couple of usability tweaks for administrators: each menu now has its own admin page (an extra click instead of scrolling a potentially very long page: not sure which I prefer), menus can arranged by drag-and-drop (phew, no more juggling weights) and when you create a new menu item Drupal checks to see if the path you've entered is valid. If not, you'll get an error message: "The path 'example' is either invalid or you do not have access to it."
Which is great. Except you might not want it to be valid if you are quickly prototyping a site and just need some dummy menu items. Or if you perhaps want to link to something non-Drupal on your server, in which case you'll have to use the full URL, e.g. http://example.com/test/test.html. I'll have to see whether this proves to be a pain or not and, if so, work out how to switch the validation off.
Drupal 6 RC3 released
Posted: Thu, 31/01/2008 - 08:53
Filed under: Drupal
Download it. Find bugs. Let them know.
As the release notes point out, Views 2 is still a couple of weeks off at least, but that doesn't mean we can't have fun trying out all the other goodies in 6.
Drupal NW February Meeting
Posted: Mon, 28/01/2008 - 14:52
Filed under: Drupal
Details here: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/419074/
Groups page here: http://groups.drupal.org/north-west-uk
I'm planning to do a talk on Drupal 6 theming, to have a look at what's new, what's cool and why themes can be made of CSS and CSS alone. I wasn't planning on being quite so busy, but I should be able to put something together before then... (he hopes!)
See you there!
menusandblocks: Drupal training in the North West
Posted: Sat, 26/01/2008 - 18:11
Filed under: Drupal, menusandblocks, training
Chris and I are putting together a Drupal training course and we're really excited about it.
We've been working really hard: we've already sorted an identity (menusandblocks) and a website and now we're trying to let everyone who needs to know about it know about it.
So, if you or anyone you know up here in the North West would love to dive into Drupal but don't know where to start, we've got the course for you. Whether you think in PHP or prefer to point and click we'll get you doing things the Drupal way. It's going to be held at the end of March (date to be confirmed) in Manchester and as it will be quite hands-on places will be limited, so sign up now!
I'm really glad we're doing this: not only does it mean more Drupal for me, but I also get to work with a good friend who's as fanatical about Drupal as I am. Wahey!
Quick fix for for feed.png in IE6
Posted: Fri, 25/01/2008 - 08:42
Filed under: Internet Explorer, Drupal, CSS
Internet Explorer 6 is still out there and we still have to deal with it. Yucky, I know, but wouldn't life be dull if it was all too easy?
If your theme is using a non-white background, here's a quick fix to display the syndication icon in all its rounded-corner loveliness:
a.feed-icon img {
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=0);
}
a.feed-icon {
display: inline-block;
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='/misc/feed.png');
}
Just pop this in your IE6 style-sheet. If you haven't set one up, this is what I do: create a folder/directory in my custom theme called ie and put any IE stylesheets in there.
For example, in this site's theme I have just one, is_ie6.css.
Then I put this in the <head> section of my page.tpl.php:
<!--[if IE 6]>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php print $base_path . $directory ?>/ie/is_ie6.css" type="text/css" media="screen" charset="utf-8" />
<![endif]-->
BarCamp Manchester
It's BarCamp Manchester right at the beginning of March (which doesn't actually seem all that far away) and I'll be going. This will be my first BarCamp but as I'm sure most of the GeekUp crowd will be there, there'll be a lot of familiar faces.
Many thanks to Paul Robinson who got this off the ground.
I'm teaming up with Chris Maiden to give a talk on Drupal, probably on all the goodness to be found in Drupal 6.
Converting a static HTML page to a Drupal 5 theme
I've posted the notes from my Drupal 5 theming talk on drupal.org.uk: http://www.drupal.org.uk/node/474 (at the Drupal NW UK User Group meeting in December 2007).
I'm hoping to put together a talk on Drupal 6 theming for the February meetup. See you there!
Short Route to Madness: Theme Block Chaos
Usually when I create a Drupal site I set the admin theme to Garland: it saves time if I don't have to theme screens only a few people will use. But not all the admin pages will use Garland, so one time I started using Taxonomy Theme to encourage them to appear the way I wanted.
While developing one particular site I was trying to configure a block in Drupal. I just couldn't get it to appear anywhere: I tried all the regions, making sure that the block would appear on every page to every vistor. No joy.
However, the block would appear on the admin pages, even though the block was set to appear only in my custom theme, not in Garland.
The culprit? Taxonomy Theme. A wonderful module, I use it often and I'm grateful to Thilo Wawrzik for creating it... but because I had set it to display all the admin pages in Garland, the blocks page assumed I was arranging blocks for Garland, not my custom theme (on reflection, that's fair enough). Only when I switched the block admin screen to my theme did it work properly. Moral of the story? No idea, I leave that sort of thing to Aesop.
