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 being the CTO of the Drupal Association, How the job has changed, and How its impacted Drupal with guests Josh Mitchell & Tim Lehnen. We’ll also cover Automatic Anchors as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/477

Topics

  • How long ago were you CTO Josh
  • Tim when did you take over
  • DA infrastructure
  • Drupal Credit System
  • Josh's proudest moment
  • Tim's proudest moment
  • Growth
  • Josh if you could do one thing differently
  • Tim if you could make one change
  • Future of the CTO job

Resources

Guests

Tim Lehnen - aspenthornpress.com hestenet

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted headings on your Drupal site to have unique id values, so links can be created to take users to specific parts of any page? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Jun 2020 by Chris Komlenic (komlenic) of Penn State
    • Versions available: 2.1.1-beta1, which supports Drupal 8.8, 9, and 10
  • Maintainership
    • Test coverage
    • Number of open issues: x open issues, y of which are bugs against the current branch
  • Usage stats:
    • 137 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • By default, the module automatically generates ids on <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, and <h6> elements within the page content
    • Even if two headings have the same content, the module will make sure their ids are unique, as well as making sure they are i18n-friendly, use hyphens instead of spaces, and are short enough to be useful
    • The module won’t interfere with or change manually-added or already-existing HTML ids
    • There’s a permission to view helpful links on each heading that the ids obvious and easy to copy
    • Configuration options include the root element it should look within (defaults to the body tag), which elements should get ids, what content to use for the displayed links, and whether or not generate ids on admin pages
Direct download: td-477-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00pm EST

Today we are talking about some things are on our mind including, The DOJ Accessibility ruling,Drupal CMS Event Recipes and Tooling for core development with our Hosts. We’ll also cover @font-your-face as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/476

Topics

  • DOJ Accessibility Ruling
  • Drupal CMS
  • Tooling for core development
  • Open University

Resources

Guests

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu
Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to add and manage web fonts for your Drupal site, directly within the admin interface? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in May 2010 by Scott Reynen, but the most recent release was by Henrique Mendes (hmendes) of CI&T
    • Versions available: 7.x-2.8 and 4.0.0 versions available, the latter of which support Drupal 9.4 and 10.
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained
    • Security coverage
    • Test coverage
    • Documentation, but looks like it might be ready for a refresh
    • Number of open issues: 48 open issues, 8 of which are bugs against the current branch
  • Usage stats:
    • 32,213 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • The module provides an interface to browse fonts from Google, Adobe, Typekit, and more
    • License restrictions for fonts are clearly indicated
    • When you find a font you want to use, you just click “enable”. You don’t need to write any CSS or define a library, and it’s easy to mix-and-match fonts from different providers. It can even make it easier to include your own local fonts
    • The module includes submodules for the different font providers, so you enable the submodules based on where you want to use fonts from
    • Then you can import the fonts for those providers, though you do need an API key to import fonts from Google
    • The module does also have an API, so you can write your own modules to integrate with other font providers, or access the information about available fonts
Direct download: td-476-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00pm EST

Today we are talking about Workspaces, What They are, and How They Work with guest Scott Weston. We’ll also cover Workspaces Extra as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/475

Topics

  • What are Workspaces in Drupal
  • What's a common use cases for Workspaces
  • Are Workspaces stable
  • Do Workspaces help with content versioning
  • What does the module ecosystem look like for Workspaces
  • Inspiration
  • Workspaces best practices
  • Any interesting ways it is being used
  • Is there a way to access workspace content in twig
  • Navigation integration
  • Workspaces and workflows
  • What aspects of a Workspace are limited to live
  • If someone wants to get involved or get started

Resources

Guests

Scott Weston - scott-weston

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

  • Brief description:
    • Do you want to extend the capabilities of the Workspaces system in Drupal core? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Apr 2021 by Andrei Mateescu (amateescu) of tag1, who has also contributed to Workspaces in core, among other many things
    • Versions available: 2.0.0-alpha3 which works with Drupal 10.3 or 11
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, latest release is less than a week old
    • Security coverage: technically yes, but not really until it has a stable release
    • Test coverage
    • Number of open issues: 20 open issues, 3 of which are bugs against the current branch, though one has already been fixed
  • Usage stats:
    • 89 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • One of the big features in Drupal 10.3 was that Workspaces is now officially stable. That said, not everything works the way some site builders will want it to. That’s where a contrib solution like Workspace Extra can help to fill in the gaps
    • It provides new options like letting you roll back changes from a published workspace, move content between workspaces, discard changes in a workspace, squashing content revisions when a workspace is published, and more
    • Workspaces Extra, or WSE also includes a number of submodules to add even more capabilities. For example, they can allow your workspace to stage an allowlist of configuration changes, deploy workspace content using an import/export system, stage menu changes, and more. For workflow, there’s an option to generate a shareable workspace preview link for external users, and a scheduler to publish your workspace at a specific day and time
    • I will add that the first time I played with workspaces I ran into an issue where I couldn’t create media entities within a workspace. I don’t know for sure that this hasn’t been fixed in core, but the core issue about it is still listed as “Needs work”. That said, the last comment on that issue (link in the show notes) lists WSE as something that helps, so if you encounter the same issue with Workspaces, WSE is worth a try
Direct download: td-475-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00pm EST

Today we are talking about the revolt event Loop, what it is, and why it matters with guest Alexander Varwijk. We’ll also cover IEF Complex Widget Dialog as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/474

Topics

  • What is an event loop
  • Why does Drupal need an event loop
  • What will change in core to implement this
  • What problem does this solve
  • Does this make Cron cleaner and long running processes faster
  • What impact will this have on contrib
  • How would contrib use this loop
  • What does this mean for database compatibility
  • What inspired this change
  • Test instability
  • Why Revolt
  • Will this help with Drupal AI

Resources

Guests

Alexander Varwijk - alexandervarwijk.com Kingdutch

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to use Inline Entity Forms but have the dependent form open in a dialog? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Mar 2020 by dataweb, though recent releases are by Chris Lai (chrisck), a fellow Canadian
    • Versions available: 2.1.1 and 2.2.2, the latter or which is compatible Drupal 8.8 or newer, all the way up to Drupal 11
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, latest release in the past month
    • Number of open issues: 4 open issues, none of which are bugs against the current version
  • Usage stats:
    • 273 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • When you install the module, your Inline Entity Form widget configuration will have a new checkbox, to “Enable Popup for IEF”
    • Includes specialized handling for different kinds of entities, like nodes, users, taxonomy terms, and users
    • Will handle not just the creation forms, but editing entities, and also duplicating or deleting entities
    • Not something you would always need, but can be very useful if the form you want to use for entity or even parent forms that are complex
    • I should also add that IEF supports form modes, so often I’ll create an “embedded” form mode that exposes fewer elements, for example hiding the fields for URL alias, sticky, and so on. So I would start there, but if the content creation experience still feels complex, then IEF Complex Widget Dialog might be a nice way to help
Direct download: td-474-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 3:00pm EST