Howdy!
I hope you had an awesome spring break and did something fantastic. Or nothing at all, which is its own kind of fantastic.
I come to you on this fine Tuesday, hopefully after you've worked through your weekend email and are diving into actually getting something done, to let you know that I'm releasing 34 minutes of new material in the Upgrading to Drupal 8 and Front End Development collections. So, if you don't already have plans for your lunch break...
Judging from the emails I get from you guys, there's a lot of interest around Drupal 8 theming, and I wanted to point out what we currently have on BuildAModule to get you started.
First, we have an entire chapter in Drupal 8 Development Prep dedicated to theming in Twig, starting here. Even though the focus of this chapter is theming for module building, the same principles apply to theming for a Drupal 8 theme.
Second, a big reason I'm working on Front End Development is to set a solid foundation for theming in Drupal 8. D8 is the first Drupal to come bundled with themes built for legit front end developers. Theming in Drupal 8 doesn't need to only involve hacking existing templates - though that's still a valid approach - but it can mean building templates from the ground up to custom fit specific goals. Drupal 8 can get out of the way to let that happen, but to make it work you have to know what you're doing with CSS and HTML. So, if you're aching for more D8 theming content, consider taking a look at Front End Development and maybe you'll find some important gems that will help you along the way.
And of course I plan on tacking D8 theming before too long head-on, so hang tight.
Have a beautiful day, and here's the latest new stuff on BAM.
Overview of our strategy for overriding third party library CSS selectors New!
We've been copying and pasting Flexslider selectors straight from the CSS source, but here we explain explicitly why we're taking this approach and how to make it a sustainable strategy for any third party library with CSS.
Fixing some CSS errors introduced through sleep-deprived developer error New!
If you have a keen eye, you may have noticed a couple of bugs in the last batch of code for overriding the look of our pagination elements. Here we introduce an element of practicality (that is, no developer is perfect!) and correct our errors.
How to change the spacing between Flexslider paging elements New!
Our pagination almost looks perfect. In this video we tighten up the space between the pagination elements to make it look even better.
How to resume from this point (part 1, step 43) New! (This one's FREE!)
If you want to hop in this series without starting from the beginning, we walk you through the software we have running and what you need to start getting to work from this point.
How to create multiple vertical columns for content using float and margin New!
Here we start dipping our toes into layout by figuring out how to create multiple columns using just divs. First, we use a simple strategy employing a single float and a margin - a strategy that works well for elements that have variable width.
Using the float and margin strategy for our author image and snippet content New!
Having explored the idea of using an element with float and another with margin to create columns of content, we employ the strategy in the browser on our snippet content.
How to use multiple floats to separate content into columns New! (This one's FREE!)
The technique we just used to create vertical columns works great with a single pair of elements, but using a series floats is a common approach to creating a longer set of vertical columns. Here we talk through how to do that.
How to use the CSS "overflow" property New!
We came across the "overflow" CSS property earlier when we were digging into the Flexslider CSS, but here we talk about how it can be used to hide content or correctly wrap around floated elements.
Refining the margins for our snippet content New!
In this video we correct some margins in our snippet content to bring it more in like with our mockup.
Moving our snippet styles from the browser to permanent SASS rules New!
Having created a working set of styles in the browser that split our snippet content into vertical columns, we work through the process of porting our changes to our SASS partials.
Reviewing improvements to caching and performance in Drupal 8 New! (This one's FREE!)
We've alluded to the improvements to performance in Drupal 8 in previous videos, but here we explain how the caching works in greater depth as well as its implications.
Comparing the "Logging and errors" page in Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 New!
In Drupal 8 there is now a backtrace option, which can be useful for debugging errors - particularly with contributed modules.
How to avoid overriding important changes with importing configuration in Drupal 8 New! (This one's FREE!)
In some earlier videos we demonstrated how to use the "Configuration Synchronization" tool to export and import configuration, but in this video we take that a bit further and demonstrate how to avoid accidentally overriding changes when using the tool for migrating updates from one instance of your site to another.
Comparing changes to the file system settings in Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 New!
The file system settings in Drupal 8 have been tightened up a bit, making it harder to accidentally change the location of the file directories.
Comparing changes to the image styles interface in Drupal 8 and 7 New!
For the most part, image styles in Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 work the same, though in Drupal 8 we now have the the ability to convert an image into a particular image file type, like PNG or JPG.
Comparing the Image Toolkit interface in Drupal 7 and 8 New!
The interface for selecting the image toolkit in Drupal 8 hasn't changed much, but contributed modules can now easily create plugins to extend this to use other libraries.
Comparing search configuration in Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 New!
Search configuration in Drupal 8 has been improved quite a bit, and the concept of "search pages" has been introduced. In Drupal 7, it came bundled with a search page for users and content, but in Drupal 8 you can spin up new search pages that weight content against different criteria. It's pretty cool, though you'll still need the Views module for advanced searching.
How clean URLs work in Drupal 8 New!
In Drupal 8, the interface for toggling clean URLs has been removed. Instead, the system will automatically sense when clean URLs are being used and will format all future URLs accordingly.
How date and time formats have been improved in Drupal 8 New!
In Drupal 7, the configuration around date formats was a big ambiguous and maybe overly complicated. In Drupal 8 the interface has been simplified and is much more straightforward. In this video we demonstrate how the changes might affect your workflow.
How the "Trusted host settings" option works New!
For the most parts, the "Reports" pages have remained the same. However, the status report now shows an alert for "Trusted host settings" by default. Here we explain exactly what this means.
