This video goes through some of the strategies for translating a design into a Drupal theme. We talk about the two approaches of adding the HTML to an existing Drupal theme template vs. inserting dynamic variables into the HTML provided by our designer. Throughout this video, we're going to be assuming that our designer has delivered the full HTML, CSS and JavaScript to us, and we'll be adding in the dynamic variables. In this process we start to look at the design and start to break it up into it's component Drupal parts and start to strategize for how to build out the site and implement the design..
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This video walks through the new interface in Drupal 7 for enabling themes, setting them to be the default, and configuring the administration theme. It also walks through the process of downloading a contributed theme, and where to store it. Finally, it walks through the theme settings pages that provide a user interface for turning on and off specific options for a theme.
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Field Templates
FreeIn this lesson we cover how you can do some powerful things with Display Suite in regards to field templates. Using the Display Suite GUI there are lots of configurations and offerings to get the markup just the way you want.
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Display Suite is a module that controls the display of your notes, users, comments, and any entity that's available in your system.
In this video, I will cover the installation of the module and some quick overview of all the menu items that will be made available if you install Display Suite, through the three modules that are its components: Display Suite, Extras, and Search Display.
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I am going to show you how you can upload an image of any size and it will automatically display as the size/style that you designate by editing the display field settings for your content type. We are going to add an image field to the basic page content type and set the node display to use medium size of 220 wide by 220 tall. Being able to set a standard for image display creates consistency and a better user experience. Site builders and content administrators will also have less work because you don’t need to cut all of your images before you upload them. Drupal does all the work for you!
So, we now have all of our CSS and HTML in our sub-theme. In this lesson, we've moved over the remaining files that our theme will need, like the images folder, and our node template files. The last step to finish this theme up, is to modify our CSS to take advantage of the responsive framework we already have in place. To do that we'll:
- Review the theme files
- Look at our default CSS file
- See the responsive changes
We're in the home stretch with our theme, so let's make our CSS responsive and wrap things up.
You can download the final Ninesixty Robots Omega theme as a regular project from Drupal.org.
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You can download the final Ninesixty Robots Omega theme as a regular project from Drupal.org.
In this lesson we have fast-forwarded some by completing the conversion of our old page.tpl.php into the new Omage theme. We'll take a look at the work we've done to get to this point, and then deal with what looks like could be a tricky HTML wrapper problem by creating a new zone for our theme, and configuring it to meet our needs. So, we'll:
- Review templates and variables
- Add a new zone to our theme
- Configure our regions with the new zone
This is where we can really see how to blend the usefulness of code and configuration in Omega, to accomplish our task in a very simple way.
Additional resources
You can download the final Ninesixty Robots Omega theme as a regular project from Drupal.org.
We have a custom template file that has the HTML that we want, but not all of variables are coming through yet, and instead we are getting "Undefined variable" errors. In this lesson we're going to take care of that, as well as making sure our custom variables from the original 960 Robots get moved over as well. Omega has its own best practices around adding preprocess and process functions to a sub-theme, so we'll walk through what Omega expects, and how to use the files and examples that Omega is providing for us. So we're going to:
- Look at the Omega best practices
- Create a process include file
- Add our region variables
- Add our custom variable from 960 Robots
Additional resources
You can download the final Ninesixty Robots Omega theme as a regular project from Drupal.org.
For this lesson we get to finally start to convert our 90 Robots theme into our Omega sub-theme. We're going to take a look at what we have the original 960 Robots files, and start to move that into our 960 Robots Omega theme. To start things off we will:
- Review theme files
- Move main.css into the global.css file
- Begin converting the page.tpl.php
- Create a custom region template
Here is where the rubber meets the road for making our sub-theme look the way we want it to, so let's dive in.
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You can download the final Ninesixty Robots Omega theme as a regular project from Drupal.org.
The combination of Omega, Alpha and our new 960 robots base theme means that there are a pile ton of CSS files included in our pages now. These CSS files provide the foundation for some of the coolest features in Omega like the mobile first approach and the ability to provide a responsive design. Lets take a look at
- The various CSS files included by alpha, Omega, and our subtheme and how they work together
- Do a quick expirement to demonstrate the various CSS files associated with Omega's media queries
- Talk abou the HTML output by the Omega theme and how it's structured.
So put on your goggles beacuse we're about dive deep into the land of responsive CSS.
Additional resources
You can download the final Ninesixty Robots Omega theme as a regular project from Drupal.org.
In this lesson we will be covering how take all the settings we have made for our 960 robots subtheme and export it into code. We will cover multiple ways of doing this and why this is a good practice to get into when working with different environements and/or other team members. We also cover adding features to the .info file from our exisiting theme into our new Omega sub-theme. So basically, this lesson will cover
- Exporting your theme
- Why export?
- 3 Different methods of export
- More theme conversion
Once the lesson is complete you will become an exporting guru and impress your friends at just about any gathering with your Omega Exporting amesomeness.
Additional resources
You can download the final Ninesixty Robots Omega theme as a regular project from Drupal.org.
Besides working with sections, zones, regions, and responzive settings, Omega provides lots of other features that make using it a good choice for your theme. Omega also offers:
- Ability to enable/disable script libraries
- Ability to enable/disable theme style sheets
- Ability to enable/disable core/contrib stylesheets
- Typical theme settings
Getting to know these settings certianly helps set the look and fell as well as the capabilties of your theme. With the ability to do things like adding the Equal heights library and enabling it across your zones is just a handy feature and it's free with Omega.
In this lesson we're going to get started with Omega by getting the base theme and creating our new sub-theme. We're going to be doing the following tasks:
- Enable Omega and Omega Tools
- Use Omega Tools to create our sub-theme
- Enable the new theme
- Review the files of the new theme
Omega offers a simple, yet nice set, of debugging tools that assist you when it comes to laying your site out in a 960 grid. Grid layous consist of columns that your content can span accross and part of these debuggung tools is the ability to turn on and off a visual indication of the particular column layout you are using. Omega also gives you the ability to toggle on and off a visual indication of all the regions availabile in your theme. Inside the theme settings you also have the ability to turn these features on or off all together or by role. So in this lesson we will cover:
- Omega debugging tools
- Grid and region visual indicators
- Omega debugging settings
We will also show you how these tools can cause some frustration when it comes to testing the layout of your site espcially in areas that don't have content yet available.
Before we can really dive in to learning Omega we need to do a couple of basic setup tasks. Mostly, we need a Drupal 7 site that has some content for us to look at while we are theming. In this lesson we're going to:
- Generate some content with devel generate module
- Install the 960 Robots theme from drupal.org
- Place some blocks in to the regions provided by the 960 Robots theme and talk a bit about what it gives us so that we can begin to understand how we might convert it to an Omega sub-theme
Under the Downloads tab, there is a copy of the final database and the files directory for this Demo site.
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In this lesson we're going to take a look at the Omega theme, cover some basic terminology around it, and discuss the advantages and challenges of using it. Specifically this lesson will cover:
- Omega features
- Helper modules
- Where to find documentation
- Omega terminology
Additional resources
- Omega theme
- Omega Tools module
- Delta module
- Omega Handbook
In this series, Getting Started with Responsive Web Design in Drupal, we'll take an old Drupal theme based on a 960 pixel grid, and convert it, step by step, using just good ole CSS and HTML, to be more fluid, more flexible, more responsive than ever.
Our case study is the Anytown Farmers Markets. Anytown Farmers Markets has an existing web site that uses a theme based on a 960 pixel grid. It works great on larger screens, pretty well on iPads, but on an iPhone, the text is really small and you have to pinch and zoom and horizontally scroll to get around the screen.
Our goal will be to transition the site from a fixed width two column desktop site to a fluid and flexible site whose layout, images, and type gracefully transform at practically any size screen to provide a user-friendly experience where our site's content can be enjoyed by users browsing with a more diverse set of devices.
Throughout this series, you'll learn how to use, configure, and customize the style of a Drupal contributed module that provides a responsive, mobile-friendly main menu. We'll tackle images, tables, and slideshows and explore some select solutions for making these traditionally rigid elements flex with a fluid container. In the process of converting this theme to be responsive, you'll learn to tackle some real-world, sometimes messy and often times not-so-clear-cut problems and potential solutions.
To take advantage of this series, you'll want to be comfortable with HTML and CSS and the basics of setting up a theme in Drupal 7. You don't need to know Sass or any advanced theming. This series will help you understand common problems encountered in responsive web design and how to solve them in the context of a Drupal 7 theme.
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In the process of transitioning their site to be more mobile friendly, The Anytown Farmers Market web team needs to take a closer look at what content they currently have on their site and how they may want to prioritize and deliver that content differently, given the broader audience base they are now targeting.
As we adapt content and navigation regions to stack, we need to decide on a priority system for each page template. We'll take the home page as an example and discuss how each component and region should be prioritized when the content is stacked into one column.
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The original 960 Robots theme is based on a 960 pixel grid. It has container and grid classes with widths declared in pixels—an absolute metric. In this lesson, we will take a first step in implementing a responsive design: converting absolute units to relative ones. We'll begin this process by editing the 960.css file, which contains the width declarations for our container and grid classes that make up our site's layout. Using the target ÷ context = result formula, we'll convert widths declared in pixels first to ems, then to percentages, with a little nudge of the decimal point over two places.
With our layout's container and grid classes using relative widths declared in percentages, we'll be on well on our way to making our site more fluid and flexible.
Additional resources
https://github.com/DrupalizeMe/demo-rwd-7x (Checkout branch 03-fluid-layout)