Talking Drupal
Talking Drupal is a weekly chat about web design and development by a group a guys with one thing in common, we love Drupal. With hosts Stephen Cross, John Picozzi and Nic Laflin.

Today we are talking about The Needs Review Queue Initiative, What it is, and How it’s helping to improve Drupal with guest Stephen Mustgrave. We’ll also cover Translation Management Tool as our module of the week.

 
 

 

For show notes visit:
www.talkingDrupal.com/426

Topics

  • Can you give an overview of Needs Review Issue Queue Initiative
  • Is the bug smash initiative related to the needs review issue queue
  • Is this the same as the needs review bot
  • How many issues were in the Needs Review status when you started
  • How many issues today
  • How long did it take until it was manageable
  • How long do items stay on average
  • Who else is helping
  • Let’s talk through the pagination heading level issue
  • What help can the community provide
  • How does someone get involved
  • Do you think this helps with burnout for core committers
  • What’s the future of the initiative

Resources

Guests

Stephen Mustgrave - smustgrave

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Melissa Bent - linkedin.com/in/melissabent merauluka

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu
Translation Management Tool (TMGMT)

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to automate the process of creating content translations on your Drupal site? There’s a module for that.
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Jan 2012
    • Versions available: 7.x-1.0-rc3 and 8.x-1.15, the latter of which works with Drupal 9 and 10
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained
    • Test coverage
    • Documentation
    • Number of open issues: 595, 139 of which are bugs against the 8.x branch
  • Usage stats:
    • 8,766 sites
  • Maintainer(s):
    • Berdir, a very prolific maintainer in his own right, who also supports well known projects like Search API, Token, Paragraphs, and many more
  • Module features and usage
    • Provides a tool set for automating the process of creating translations for your site content, as well as strings used within the site like menus, interface text, and so on
    • Works with more than 30 translation service providers, including many that leverage human translators, but also AI-based services like DeepL and OpenAI
    • Also has a plugin system to determine what text needs to be translated, so it can be easily adapted to very custom needs
    • With the module installed that Translate tab on your nodes changes to have buttons to request a translation in each language
    • Once a translation has been requested, it will run through states like unprocessed, active, and finished
    • Also provides an option for Continuous Translation, where new and updated content is automatically submitted for translation
    • Allows for professional translation at scale, using whatever kind of service works best for your site
    • The need for robust translation capabilities is what originally got me started using Drupal, so it’s great to see that there are enterprise-grade options for sites that need to manage translations at scale
Direct download: td-426-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:00pm EDT

Today we are talking about the a new Drupal Book Modernizing Drupal 10 Theme Development, What’s new in Drupal 10 theming, and tools that can help speed up theming with guest Luca Lusso. We’ll also cover Admin Dialogs as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
www.talkingDrupal.com/425

Topics

  • Why write a book about Drupal theming
  • How does the book modernize theming
  • Who is the book for
  • Do you have to have a certain level of knowledge to start
  • What are some new aspects of Drupal 10 that are covered in the book
  • Does the book talk about:
    • Javascript frameworks
    • Native Web Components
  • What tools outside of Drupal do you talk about
  • How did you conduct your research
  • Do you have plans to keep the github updated
  • How long did it take to write the book
  • Tech moves quickly, what is the shelf-life of the book
  • Future editions
  • Purchase from Amazon or Packt
  • Translation
  • Plans for another book

Resources

Guests

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Melissa Bent - linkedin.com/in/melissabent merauluka

MOTW

Correspondent

Jacob Rockowitz - @jrockowitz
Admin Dialogs

  • Brief description: (from the maintainer)
  • Brief history
    • How old: Created on May 2023
    • Versions available: 1.0.x stable release
    • Last release: 1.0.17 - July 12, 2023
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained? Yes
    • Number of open issues: 6
    • Test coverage
      • No test coverage
      • Module is fairly simple and easy to manually test
      • Code quality is very good
  • Usage stats:
    • sites 150+
  • Maintainer(s):
  • Sponsor
    • Chapter Three
  • Module features and usage
    • Comes with the ability to add modal or off-canvas dialogs to different links in Drupal.
    • Easy to use. Most features available after installing the module.
    • Adds controls dialog type for operation links like Edit, Delete etc.
    • Adds and controls dialog type for local tasks.
    • Adds and controls dialog types for local actions.
    • Ability to add dialogs via specified A tag paths.
    • Ability to add dialogs via specifying CSS selectors (classes and IDs).
    • Adds option to control delete button dialog.
    • You can add support for your modules by adding configs created in the module.
    • Experimental: Add loading spinner to form submit elements on form submit.
  • Discussion
    • The module does one thing and does it really well
    • Require no initial configuration.
    • Worth reviewing common administration tasks for contributed modules and deciding if a modal dialogs or sidebar can improve the admin UX.
Direct download: td-425-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:00pm EDT

Today we are talking about the Web Sustainability Guidelines, How sustainability applies to the web, and how your website can be more sustainable with guests Mike Gifford and Andy Blum. We’ll also cover LB Plus as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
www.talkingDrupal.com/424

Topics

  • What are the Web sustainability guidelines
  • Do they only apply to environmental impact
  • When we think about sustainability we think of funding, does WSG speak to that
  • Why are the WSG important
  • What is the best way to implement WSG
  • How do the WSG’s apply to Drupal
  • Have the WSG’s been finalized
  • Are they open source
  • How can someone get involved

Resources

Guests

Mike Gifford - mgifford.medium.com @mgifford

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Melissa Bent - linkedin.com/in/melissabent merauluka

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu
Layout Builder Plus

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to make Layout Builder easier and more intuitive for content creators? There are a few modules that can help with that, but today we’re going to talk about one called Layout Builder Plus
  • Brief history
    • How old: Originally created in Apr 2022
    • Versions available: 2.0.1 release, compatible with Drupal 10 and 11
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, latest release just a week ago
    • Number of open issues: 2, both bugs, but both marked as fixed
  • Usage stats:
    • 9 sites
  • Maintainer(s):
    • Tim Bozeman of Tag1
  • Module features and usage
    • Provides an overhaul of the Layout Builder UI, to make it easier for content creators:
    • Show a curated list of promoted blocks with icons, with lesser-used blocks available in a separate tab
    • Once a block is placed it shows automatically generated content, instead of asking the user to fill out a form before they can see what it will look like
    • Editing the content of a block happens in an overlay instead of the settings tray, so it can use more of the screen
    • Moves the Save Layout and other action buttons to the bottom of the page
    • Also adds some nice capabilities to Layout Builder, including:
    • Drag and drop entire sections
    • Change the layout of an existing section, even if it has blocks in it
    • Clone and update existing blocks
    • Finally, it includes a submodule to integrate with the Section Library module, which allows for a section within a layout to be saved so it can be reused again and again
    • I’ll also note that this is a module nominated by one of our listeners in the #talkingdrupal channel of the Drupal slack workspace, so if there’s a module you’d like to hear about in this segment, drop us a note in there
Direct download: td-424-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:00pm EDT

Today we are talking about The Conflict Resolution Team, What they do, and Why they do it with guest Mark Casias. We’ll also cover Smart Trim as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
www.talkingDrupal.com/423

Topics

  • What is the Conflict Resolution Team
  • Why is the Conflict Resolution Team needed
  • When / Why was the Conflict Resolution Team created
  • What kinds of issues does the Conflict Resolution Team deal with
  • Do you meet separately from discussing issues
  • How do you handle burnout
  • How does one become a member
  • Why are you a member
  • How do you submit an issue to the Conflict Resolution Team
  • How many submissions do you get
  • Do you have to include the Drupal Association
  • Does the DA provide tools
  • Does the Conflict Resolution Team need help
  • Is there any specific training you look for
    • Code of conduct training
  • Anything you would like to add

Resources

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Mark Casias - kanopi.com - markie

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu
Smart Trim

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to truncate provided user text in a more intelligent way than the “summary or trimmed” formatter in Drupal core? There’s a module for that.
  • Brief history
    • How old: Originally created in Apr 2012
    • Versions available: 7.x-1.6 and 2.1.0 versions available, the latter compatible with Drupal 8, 9, and 10
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained
  • Number of open issues
    • 74, 8 of which are active bugs against the 2.x branch
  • Test coverage, using the new GitLab CI
  • User guide for documentation
  • Usage stats:
    • 66,919
  • Maintainer(s):
    • Friends of the podcast, markie, ultimike, volkswagenchick
    • Module features and usage
    • Adds a variety of configuration options, in addition to the trim length:
    • Whether the length is characters or words
    • An optional suffix at the trim point e.g. ellipsis
    • Whether or not to add a more link after the trimmed text
    • Stripping HTML tags from the trimmed output
    • The ability to customize the output even more via twig template override
    • Because it works by providing a field formatter it works with entity display but also views, layout builder, and more
    • A module I’ve used many times myself and found extremely useful. I haven’t had a chance to try the latest release, but given the recent focus on UI improvements, documentation, and flexibility in the twig template it should be even better than I remember
Direct download: td-423-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:00pm EDT