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It seems Grid systems, or CSS frameworks, are being picked up by the Drupal themer community. I think this is a good thing. Some think it is a bad thing. So let us have a look at the downsides and upsides of grid systems in Drupal.

Grid Systems force you to change your HTML, that is bad.

This is wrong, for three reasons.

1. It might be bad, if it were true. But not all grid systems, or their implementations require changes to the HTML, in theory. I love SASS and its tool-kit Compass.

Drupal is not object oriënted (OO). No really, it is not! It merely borrows some design principles from OO, and uses some design concepts (such as the Observer Pattern, or hooks, in Drupal) from OO. Though many Module developers actually use another design principle, that of Classes. When creating a module, one can borrow almost all ideas from the (good) design of classes, to create a good design for a module.

Maybe you think: “Why should I design my module”?

Actually, it is very simple: I had a slot in February. And one in May. Both are gone now.

But because of the lack of anything stable-ish, I decided to use that slot for diving into some documentation on the proposed (and some submitted) changes to 7. And on getting stuff synched and tagadelic migrated to git(hub).

yelvington writes: “The first rule of coding for Drupal: We do not write code for Drupal.” I must say, that after years , I come to the exact opposite conclusion. Right now, I should be writing another webshop (instead I am writing a blog-post, but this article is not about procastrination :)).

I was one of the most outspoken for getting the first CCK, flexinode into core. Not that project itself, per sé, but the concept.

I will be hosting a Drupal iDEAL Codesprint on the Drupaljam in Amsterdam.
Please add a comment there, email me (ber -- webschuur - com) or contact me in whatever other way if you want to join, more information or anything else.

iDeal is a Dutch, online payment system, widly adopted, but hard to implement.

 

In Drupal there are many iDeal implementations for übercart, but none are very solid and none are easy to implement; some are even plain insecure.

 

The fabulous basetheme Genesis is now mirrored on Git.

This has several advantages. A basetheme is used as scaffolding for your own theme. During upgrades and bugfixes, however, your altered version will be hard to keep in sync. Usually this costs a lot of manual labour; eliminating one of the advantages of a basetheme: continuous re-use of existing work.