Drupal

The jQuery team has just released an alpha of jQuery UI 1.5 and jQuery Enchant 1.0, both of which will work with Drupal 6, as it is stated that the minimum requirements for the alphas are identical to the version of jQuery that ships with Drupal 6!

Some links to help you get your tinker on:

Download

• jQuery UI 1.5 (Alpha) (Requires jQuery 1.2.3 or higher)
• jQuery Enchant 1.0 (Alpha)

Demos

• jQuery UI 1.5 (Alpha)
• jQuery Enchant 1.0 (Alpha)

[Note: even if the jQuery version requirements for UI and Enchant change at some point before the final release, rest assured that someone in the Drupal community is sure to make an upgrade path available] ;-)

The motivation for writing this article came from my feeble attempts at trying to discuss a module I'm actively working on (to be covered in a future article) with several very intelligent Drupal developers. Due to the inherently abstract nature of the issues, and for lack of a common language, the end result was that in every case each person just ended up scratching their heads at me without really comprehending what I was really trying to get at.

Hyper-dynamic defined
Technically speaking, Drupal offers a dynamic framework right out of the box, right, so what is meant by "hyper-dynamic"?

Hyper-dynamic, for lack of a better description, refers to sites/sections-of-a-site for which pages do not exist as individual nodes, AND which (for example) are more complex than a single static view/panel. A panel/view which takes arguments, particularly multiple arguments, is an example of hyper-dynamic content delivery.

Getting down to business...
How is this idea of hyper-dynamic content useful and/or or what are the use cases?

As a 'simple' example, let's say we have a multi-regional travel site which caters to people looking for info/deals on casinos. For each region, we'd like to have a separate homepage, AND separate landing pages for each casino within the region. Finally, let's throw in a "Deals" subpage for every region/casino.

There is perhaps no other Drupal-related issue which commands so much attention from site admins, Drupal developers, and Drupal core alike, as the subject of Drupal updates/upgrades.

The Players

Site admins typically want to have the 'latest and greatest' version just for general purposes. This is, of course, very understandable, all other things being equal.

Drupal developers like to be able to keep up with the latest release for various reasons: a) to take advantage of new features, b) to keep their skills current, b) because their clients want it, c) as any bonafide geek knows, it's alway fun to check out the new toys.

Drupal core is always concerned about Drupal updates, well because...it's Drupal core. The project and Drupal itself is dead, or at least frozen in time, if it ceases to innovate at semi-consistent intervals.

I am pleased to announce the official release of the Advanced Theme Construction Kit (atck) (project page):

atck was developed in a production environment for purposes of quickly building css and xhtml valid Drupal themes from scratch without having to un-theme an existing Drupal theme to do it.

atck components include:

1. WYSIWYG grid builder
A browser-based grid builder which produces starter code for a page.tpl.php file. The grid builder itself was originially built by Christos Constandinou and it uses a modified version of Yahoo Grids which is more flexible and easier to customize. With Christos' permission it, and the supporting css, has been customized so that it works for Drupal themes and so that it is css3 valid. Access the builder online (FF only!), or download it and run it locally. [builder cannot be on Drupal.org because of MIT license]

2. style.css [separate download because of BSD license]
style.css contains only the css needed to support what the grid-builder outputs, as well as some general 'resets'. The only modifications one should need to make here would be if they want to make their layout a fixed width and/or a different width (default widths are in %).

3. page-layout.css and template.php
These files are where the visual styling of the site happens. The source of these files is from a combination of code from the Hunchbaque theme and some changes/additions which I added in order to provide baseline settings I prefer and/or provide more granular settings. The beauty of these files is the simplicty of them - they include as little markup/styling as possible to avoid complexity, while at the same time putting many helpful tools/comments at your finger tips so that you can accomplish what you want.

4. page.tpl.php
A sample page.tpl.file is included as a reference for finishing your own page.tpl.php file using code output from the grid builder. Note particularly the variable names for the blocks, regions, menus, etc. (at this point the builder does not include those items)

5. fix-ie-6.css and fix-ie-7.css
These files are included for purposes of providing IE-only css to each of the respective versions. By using conditional comments like this we keep the main css files hack-free and atck css3 valid.

Please keep in mind that this is an initial release - comments, contributions, etc welcome! (please file such things at the project issues queue though)