Design and Prototyping for Drupal

by Dani Nordin

Overview

Itching to build interesting projects with Drupal, but confused by the way it handles design challenges? This concise guide helps small teams and solo website designers understand how Drupal works by demonstrating the ways it outputs content. You’ll learn how to manage Drupal’s output, design around it, and then turn your design into a theme.

In the second of three volumes on Drupal design, award-winning designer Dani Nordin takes you beyond basic site planning and teaches you key strategies for working with themes, layouts, and wireframes. Discover how to use Drupal to make your vision a reality, instead of getting distracted by the system’s project and code management details.

• Learn strategies for sketching, wireframing, and designing effective layouts
• Break down a Drupal layout to understand its basic components
• Understand Drupal’s theme layer, and what to look for in a base theme
• Work with the 960 grid system to facilitate efficient wireframing and theming
• Manage Drupal markup, including the code generated by the powerful Views module
• Use LessCSS to organize CSS and help you theme your site more efficiently

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781449305505
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	12/27/2011
Pages:	166
Product dimensions:	6.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Dani Nordin is the founder and principal designer of the zen kitchen, where you'll find tasty marketing and design ideas with an eco-friendly twist. She has over 10 years of experience designing award-winning work for small to large businesses and non-profits.

Table of Contents

Preface; Introduction; Conventions Used in This Book; Using Code Examples; Safari® Books Online; How to Contact Us; About the Reviewers; Acknowledgments; Getting Started: Some Stuff to Consider; Chapter 1: Design for Drupal: Basic Concepts; 1.1 About the Case Studies; Chapter 2: The Drupal Designer’s Toolkit; 2.1 Balsamiq Mockups; 2.2 Fireworks; 2.3 Coda; 2.4 LessCSS and Less.app; Design and Layout; Chapter 3: Sketch Many, Show One; 3.1 Ideation: Methods and Madness; Chapter 4: Using Style Tiles to Explore Design Ideas; Chapter 5: Design Layout: Covering All Your Bases; 5.1 Greyboxing: An In-Between Option; Chapter 6: Working with Layout Grids; 6.1 Why Use a Grid?; 6.2 Grids in Wireframing; 6.3 Grids in Theming; 6.4 Anatomy of a Grid Layout; 6.5 But What About All These Presentational Classes? There Must Be a Better Way!; 6.6 The New CSS Grid Layout module: The Future Is Now; 6.7 Going Deeper: CSS Layout and Grid Systems; Chapter 7: Setting up Fireworks Templates for Drupal; 7.1 Step One: Setting Up the Grid; 7.2 Step Two: Setting Up the Header; 7.3 Step 3: Single Node Page; 7.4 Step 4: Single Node Pages with Sidebars; 7.5 Step 5: Create the Other Pages; 7.6 Step 6: Step Up the Visuals; Prototyping, Theming, and Managing your Markup; Chapter 8: Paper Prototyping; 8.1 When to Use a Paper Prototype; 8.2 Fidelity; 8.3 Creating a Paper Prototype; 8.4 Walking Through the Prototype; 8.5 Other Types of Prototypes; Chapter 9: Breaking Down a Layout for Drupal Implementation; 9.1 Nodes; 9.2 Blocks; 9.3 Views; Chapter 10: Working with Base Themes; 10.1 How to Choose a Base Theme; 10.2 Other Base Themes to Try; 10.3 Creating a Child Theme; 10.4 Other Things You Should Know About Base Themes; 10.5 Please, Tell Me More!; Chapter 11: Prototyping in the Browser; Chapter 12: Practical Example #1: Using Views to Enhance a Layout; 12.1 But I’m Not a Developer—What if I Don’t Want to Code?; 12.2 Step 1: Create the “Event Categories” Taxonomy Vocabulary; 12.3 Step 2: Create the Event Content Type; 12.4 Step 3: Create an Image Style; 12.5 Step 4: Create the User Profile; 12.6 Step 5: Getting Profile Content into the Event Page; 12.7 Step 6: Setting Up the Contextual Filter; 12.8 Step 7: Setting Up the “Related Events” Block; 12.9 So What Did We Just Do Here?; Chapter 13: Practical Example #2: Controlling Views Markup; 13.1 Step 1: Associating an Image with a Taxonomy Term; 13.2 Step 2: Create the Event Categories View; 13.3 Step 3: Update the Field Settings; 13.4 Step 4: Add a Custom Class to Each Taxonomy Term: Name Field; 13.5 Step 5: Style Away; 13.6 So What Did We Just Do Here?; Chapter 14: Managing Your Code: Some Modules that Can Help; 14.1 Block Class; 14.2 HTML5 Tools and Elements; 14.3 @font-your-face; 14.4 Semantic Fields; Chapter 15: Working with LessCSS; 15.1 Creating Variables; 15.2 The Mighty Mixin; 15.3 Nesting Behavior; 15.4 Compiling the Code; 15.5 Working with LessCSS: Organizing Your Stylesheets; 15.6 Why This is Awesome (Aside From the Obvious); 15.7 Working with LessCSS on a Team;