Redkey’s Blog

Drupal 7: first impressions

In the last post I mentioned that I was going to be trying out Drupal 7 for a new service we're biulding for Redkey.

Well, it didn't take me long to realise that Drupal 7 is not quite ready for prime time yet. This should not be a surprise because it is, after all, still in Alpha. But, what I did see was quite exciting.

The user interface is just so much better. The D7UX effort led by Mark Boulton and Leisa Reichelt did a fantastic job with this. Here's a summary:

• There is now a standard admin toolbar at the top.
• Contextual admin tasks can now be made to appear in overlays - useful when you need to stay on the page. Lookswise, the overlay can still be improved as it still looks 'raw'. This is also great for agencies because showing the ugly admin tools to a client wasn't always pleasant.
• On-hover contextual links work ilke in the D6 Admin module but with a neater UI. Although I have ot say I quite like the minimalist admin-icon in the new D6 Admin module.
• Customisable shortcuts make frequently used links easy to reach. We had a custom module for this built for client projects, but it is now standard in D7.
• Vertical tabs make the UI so much cleaner and less daunting. This is available as a module in D6, but standard in D7.
• I have not yet looked under the hood of D7 but it sounds like a lot of performance enhancements in Pressflow 6 is now in D7. The D6 to D7 migration page also lists various changes that have been incorporated at low level.
• The blocks management is still pretty much the same, which is disappointing. The admin for blocks is still pretty dire and needs a complete rethink, with the visibility setting a priority item to improve on, IMHO.

That was just  quick rundown, and the reason we don't want to use it yet for our little project is because a lot of what we need are sitll unavailable and would have taken us too long to contribute to. These include the Location module and OpenLayers.

Fieldgroup will not be ported to core, even though CCK has been. It looks like this is part of a larger issue. There's a call for volunteers for porting fieldgroup, but pesonally I think the requirements look overengineered.

For the little project we're working on, we will go back to Drupal 6 for now, but D7 looks like quite a leap forward.

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Drupalhire - Drupal jobs, projects and talent

We're building Drupalhire.net to meet the demand for a single, dedicated location for hiring Drupal developers, posting Drupal project RFPs and looking for Drupal work.

If you are involved in any way at all with Drupal, please help us build the service that you want to see by visiting http://drupalhire.net and filling in the very short survey (it'll take you just 2 minutes). We will also be inviting beta users from the survey respondents (beta users can submit job posts for free).

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Taking Drupal 7 for a spin (+ new site for the Drupal community)

To D7 or to not D7. Yes, it's still in Alpha (Alpha 5, at the time of writing), but what better time to be involved in getting to know it and guide it into Beta. 

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Code snippet unavailability

The posts before this one were imported from a different blog host,
and some of the code snippets are missing. If you see a post and need
a snippet from it, please comment and I'll try and fix it.

Thanks and apologies.

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Migrating your website/CMS to Drupal

I've noticed recently that there is quite a significant number of Drupal projects that involve migrating an existing site form platform X or CMS Y to Drupal, including behemoths like economist.com and examiner.com. We have had requests from our own clients too.

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Funding for mobile app development in the UK

Inspired by @Ew4n's talk at the last Twitter Devnest, i.e. where he mentioned iPhones aren't the only places where you can make money building apps for, I went and look for these pots of money that other companies are offering developers.

If you're a developer, especially for mobile, looking for potential sources of dough, here are some leads:

BlackBerry Partners Fund
http://www.blackberrypartnersfund.com/

Vodafone App Star
http://widget.developer.vodafone.com/appstar

Nokia Calling All Innovators
http://www.callingallinnovators.com/

Open Screen Project (Nokia + Adobe)
http://www.openscreenproject.org/developers/get_started.html

It's worth checking out specific handset manufacturers also, especially those that are coming out with their own 'app store'. For example, Samsung had a funding programme last year.

Here's a couple of non-mobile-specific ones (I'm sure there are loads of these out there):

http://developers.facebook.com/fbFund.php?tab=about
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/futurecalls/grant.aspx

If you know of more, please add in the comment!

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Speaking Through the Multitude

Fresh out of the oven... have a look at artist Claudia Corrieri's piece, Speaking Through the Multitude: Composition 1, 2 and 3.  Designed by Kit Grill, built by Redkey.

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Drupal Acquia Partners in Central London

Quite surprised by this, but Redkey is only one of four registered Acquia Partner in Central London:

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Drupal developer wanted urgently

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Page-fold myth proven

We often hear how designers and web developers get clients worked up about not having important content 'below the fold' because users may not scroll down to see it.

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