Designer, themer

Fleshing out the plans is here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/12972

Looking for co-hosts!

example:
- do a card sort on the admin categories
- discuss the different 'dashboard' approaches people already use
- choose 2 options we want to compare / test

another example:
- let's pick a nice chunk of core interface text: labels, descriptions, help
- rework them for clarity, consistency and brevity.

BoF Usability Sprint Day 2

build prototypes: on paper, in photoshop and/or code
or: further work on interface copy, start documenting the copywriting guidelines we find.

Fleshing out the plans is here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/12972

BoF Usability Sprint Day 1

* zoom in on 1 or 2 issues we already decided upon before the conference
(redo admin categories, modules page, permissions page…)
* bring your ideas and proposals
* discuss the options, decide on 1 or 2 things we can work on.

example:
- do a card sort on the admin categories
- discuss the different 'dashboard' approaches people already use
- choose 2 options we want to compare / test

another example:
- let's pick a nice chunk of core interface text: labels, descriptions, help
- rework them for clarity, consistency and brevity.

Overview

Version 2 of the popular Views module was rewritten from scratch to make it even more flexible and powerful. With more flexibility comes more complexity and quite some time was spent working out a user interface that could expose all these powerful features without becoming an enormous scrolling form. This session retraces the process that led to the current interface, showcasing how developers and interface designers worked together to find a working solution to a complex problem.

Agenda

- Views1 to Views 2: adding multiple dimensions of infinite flexibility.
- Concepts, wireframes, and other false starts.
- Two basic concepts: sentences and summaries.
- The end result. Do you like it? What could be better? How can we translate the good bits to other use cases?

Goals

First of all, this presentation wants to provide an overview of the design process for this particular user interface. The larger picture is that the web is rapidly evolving from websites into web applications. The Drupal UI toolkit has to be extended with smarter and more complex form widgets to build the interfaces for these web apps. Ideally the good stuff in Views 2 can find it's way into other Drupal applications as well.

Resources
Bring your own feedback on the new interface! What do you like, what do you think could be improved?

Overview

Over the past few months, we've seen a number of major drupal site rollouts that make extensive use of Panels2 (See, for example, http://drupal.org/node/241344 and http://drupal.org/node/242993). We've also seen a few modules implement the Panels API in rather different ways - most notably, Advanced Profile Kit and Organic Groups Panels - that hint at how flexible Panels can be.

We'll start this session by highlighting these different Panels implementations and providing a birds-eye view of how Panels' moving parts work. We want to make sure attendees have a good sense of what Panels2 can do now - because the second half of the presentation is all about the future of Panels - otherwise known as Panels3.

Panels3 isn't so much about changing the data model (that part already works pretty well) as changing the API and interface. One good way to think about this difference is to consider Panels2's limitations on who can use it. Right now, it's very difficult to scale down the power of Panels to a level that's appropriate for normal users. Panels3 aims to break down that barrier. We'll spend the remainder of the session overviewing some of the current plans for how Panels3 might do that, as well as noting attendee suggestions for some of the large-scale directions we might consider.

Agenda

* Briefly overview Panels2 to bring everyone up to speed on the most recent developments.
* Provide some concrete examples of ways that the Panels API is currently being implemented.
* Present some of the current plans for the future development of Panels
* Gather participant reactions to the proposed ideas, and take general input on possible directions to go as well

Goals

Participants should expect to leave the session with a grasp of Panels' capabilities in the present, and a sense of what to expect in the future.

Resources

None needed. Just bring yourself!

Overview

This session will focus on taking full control of node displays. It will be geared toward intermediate and beginner Drupal themers.

Agenda

* Using Devel module to build node templates
* Templating with Zen theme
* Creating clean and maintainable templates
* Adding and changing node variables
* Working with CCK and node templates
* Panels 2 for node displays
* Using custom node templates for views
* Customizing node component displays such as taxonomy and links

Goals

Attendees should leave the session feeling confident that they can template the most complex displays.

Requirements

Fluency in xhtml and a (minimum) beginner's level of php will be needed.

Overview
We propose to show you the making-of boucheron.com, an e-commerce Drupal website we've built for two years, with a full Flash front-end. We'll also present some bits of the specific backoffice and how in/out dataflow works.

Agenda

* Flash and drupal, how to make them talk together
* Used modules for ec-commerce
* Creation and extension of e-commerce modules
* Creation of the backoffice
* Integration with others informations system : ERP, CRM, AS400

Goals

Understanding the building parts by parts of a successful e-commerce service in an international context using flash for a luxury user experience.

Resources
* ecommerce website
* company data flows

Overview

This session presents a replacement for the existing aggregator module in Drupal 7 core. It is not just geared towards coders but to anybody who's dealing with aggregation in Drupal. We'd like to show you what's exciting about the new aggregator, talk about new possibilities it opens up and ask you for your feedback.

Background:

Drupal core's aggregator module wasn't designed with a wide range of use cases in mind. It supports aggregation of RSS and Atom feeds to a configurable set of categories on your Drupal site. But there is much more that users want to do with aggregation in Drupal aside from simple news aggregation, e. g.:

* Import iCal feeds to events
* Import to complex content types with custom fields
* Support workflow, access control or commenting on feeds or feed items
* Import special feed formats like NewsML

These and other demands have lead to a plethora of aggregation modules in contrib land: aggregator2, leech, simplefeed, aggregation and feedapi are just some of them. Most of them satisfied specific use cases and failed to cover the wider field of scenarios, hence none of them made the breakthrough to being the prevalent solution.

After a first attempt with FeedAPI in 2007 Aron Novak did it again for Google Summer of Code 2008: he took on the task to come up with a solution fit to replace ye olde aggregator. The result is a simple yet extensible and efficient architecture that should serve us well as a basis for the coming years.

Agenda

* Give an overview over existing aggregation modules in Drupal and its properties
* Explain why a new aggregator in core is better than the module-that-fits-best out there
* Present architecture of new aggregator for D7
* Present important features and explain specific design decisions
* Real world examples of what the new aggregator does or enables us to do:
** aggregate lightweight feed items or nodes
** lazy instantiation of feed items
** high performance setups
** (more to be announced when presentation is ready)

Goals

* Give you a good understanding of what's in the box
* Get your feedback on specific design decisions
* Do another step away from "many similar incompatible modules that do the same thing but slightly different" towards "many compatible modules that give you more flexible and better options"
* Inspire you to think beyond the current boundaries in aggregation

Resources

This is not mandatory by any means, but if you want to prepare for this session, we recommend to

* Test drive the new aggregator: http://drupal.org/project/new_aggregator or http://drupal.org/node/236237 (patch)
* Read the architecture outline http://groups.drupal.org/node/12772
* Have a look at the code

Overview

Ubercart is well on its way to a Drupal 6 release (codenamed Uber Tuber). As of this posting, 26/32 modules have been migrated. However, these are quick API migrations without a lot of retooling that would drag out the update process. Uber Tuber will be similar in functionality to the 1.0 release, just compatible with Drupal 6 and sans a few external dependencies.

As was laid out in our development roadmap, we're planning further core improvements and Drupal 6 API updates for a 3.0 release. We have a good idea of what many of these improvements should be, but we want to do some serious brainstorming with other developers and themers with some planning toward actual implementation. We're excited about the new features Drupal 6 brings to the table and can't wait to fully embrace them in Ubercart.

As such, we invite anyone to attend who is interested in Ubercart on Drupal 6 or has knowledge of how the core changes from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 might benefit Ubercart. We also aren't ashamed to admit that many of our core systems have proven less helpful for developers and themers than we initially imagined. As such, anyone who wants to see changes in the Ubercore should attend and provide feedback on how things can be easier.

Please see the "Optimization" paragraph related to Drupal 6 in the development roadmap for more information.

Agenda

* Update on the current status of Drupal 6 development.
* Discuss core Ubercart API improvements.
* Discuss theming improvements:
   - General core improvements
   - Updates for improvements in Drupal 6
   - Address invoice templates
   - Anything else?
* Discuss performance improvements:
   - Using 'file' for menu items
   - ... ?
* Discuss internationalization improvements:
   - Country/zone system overhaul
   - VAT!
* Discuss improvements in the contribution process.

Goals

Drupallers who attend this BoF will get up to speed on the state of Ubercart development in Drupal 6. Further, we'll be planning many improvements for Ubercart that will be worked into Ubercart 3.0 and recruiting as many people as possible to help in the work!

Resources

* Ubercart 2.x-dev - http://drupal.org/node/280820
* Development roadmap - http://www.ubercart.org/forum/development/5115/...
* Migration status - http://support.ubercart.org/discuss/67/...

Related sessions

Drupallers looking for a more general introduction to Ubercart should consider attending Introducing Ubercart instead. Most of the features will be the same for Ubercart 2.0, so that session should prove more helpful!

We'll also be performing A Hands On Guide to Module Development in which we will discuss the things we've done wrong and are starting to do right in module development. The session will include an example of developing a module that integrates with Ubercart.

* This session was posted as a BoF but could be turned into an actual session with enough interest. We would keep the tone informal, but could reach a broader audience with the larger space if necessary.

Overview

iwanttospeak.net is a worldwide language learning community. From the initial idea to its beta launch only a few weeks passed. This shows Drupals power and flexibility in "rapid prototyping". The goals were: Possible support of all world languages (managed by the community itself), Private messages, Custom User Profiles, easy but failsafe geographical tagging of users for a worldwide proximity search, ...

Agenda

* Rapid Prototyping to speed up developement
* Customizing Themes and Modules
* Multilingual support
* Geotagging of Users and worldwide proximity search
* Usability improvements

Goals

During this session we want to share our experience using Drupals army of contributed modules for „rapid prototyping“. We also would like to discuss, which contributed modules are essential for developing websites with Drupal. We think that knowing a number of contributed „keymodules“ is absolutely essential for developing websites with Drupal.

We will show how we used the Bio module for collecting all user related information during the registration process and storing this information as nodes.

A key feature of iwanttospeak.net is the worldwide proximity search for users. We will show how we used Googles API for the geospatial information and how we use this information to calculate the distance between users worldwide.

iwanttospeak.net is currently available in 9 languages (including Russian, Hungarian, German, Italian). All translations were contributed by members of the iwanttospeak.net language community with little technical knowledge and no Drupal experience. We will demonstrate how we used i18n module and a slightly modified version of the Localization client Module to let users directly translate the interface.

Resources

www.iwanttospeak.net

Overview

Media RSS (MRSS) is an RSS module used for syndicating multimedia files (audio, video, image) in RSS feeds. It was designed in 2004 by Yahoo! and the Media RSS community, and adds several enhancements to RSS enclosures. PicLens is Browser extension which reads in such an rss feed and provides your visitors with an immersive slideshow experience for rich media on your website. If you don't have the plugin installed, PicLens Lite can be enabled to use a flex application.

Agenda

* What is MediaRSS and what's the format
* Showcase of PicLens extension
* Introduction to Piclens Module and sub-modules and API
* Plan for the future: mediarss api in core or separate contrib?

Goals

Cool demo of piclens and getting more media maintainers interested to implement hook_media_rss_items into their projects.

Resources

http://drupal.org/project/piclens : piclens module
http://realize.be/image-galleries/drupalcon-boston-2008 : piclens module in action
http://search.yahoo.com/mrss : mediarss specification