drupal

The Drop Times: Transforming Drupal Site Building: Lauri Timmanee on Experience Builder and Starshot Initiative

Experience Builder (XB) is set to redefine how we build and launch Drupal sites. As a cornerstone of the Starshot initiative, the XB module bridges the gap between Drupal installation and site launch, simplifying the process for all users. Kazima Abbas, sub-editor at The Drop Times, interviews Lauri Eskola, the Product Lead for the XB initiative. Lauri shares the inspiration behind XB, its integration with Starshot, and how it enhances Drupal's user experience and accessibility.

LN Webworks: How Important Is Low-code development to your company?

Image removed.

Low-code solutions are a quick and adaptable substitute for the conventional development cycle as digitization picks up speed. 

Low-code developments are quick, flexible, and affordable but perform better at certain tasks than others. Businesses usually use them mainly in these particular areas- Workflow Automation, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Data Integration, Mobile and Web Applications, Business Process Management (BPM), Internal Tools and Dashboards, and E-commerce Platforms.

Before this, let’s delve into the concept of low-code development to gain insight into how it benefits businesses.

Matt Glaman: Running Drupal on the Edge with WebAssembly

At DrupalCon Portland, Dries announced Starshot during his State of Drupal presentation. Part of Starshot is the idea that we have Drupal CMS and Core. The big difference is that the Drupal CMS offering comes with standard contributed modules used by almost every existing Drupal build. Then, Dries showed a proposed wireframe for the Drupal.org download page. One of the first things I noticed was the "Launch" in the Drupal CMS section. I wasn't sure about the end goal: 

The Drop Times: CMS Usage Patterns in USA Charity and Non-Profit Organizations: FOSS Takes the Lead

A comprehensive analysis by The DropTimes (TDT) examines CMS usage across 8,134 non-profit and charity organizations in the United States. The findings highlight a dominant preference for Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) solutions, with WordPress being the most widely used CMS. Drupal also shows significant usage, especially among top-ranked websites.

Specbee: Why Stylus is more flexible than SCSS and how to implement it in Drupal

Did you know that the first CSS preprocessor was introduced over a decade ago, changing the way we write stylesheets? A CSS Preprocessor extends the limited capabilities of CSS and helps in improving efficiency, maintainability, organization, and reusability.  The tool in focus today is a very popular CSS preprocessor tool - Stylus. Stylus takes your CSS to the next level. With features like variables, nesting, and mixins, Stylus transforms the repetitive, cumbersome aspects of writing CSS into a streamlined, efficient process. It offers a dynamic approach to styling that will enhance your productivity and keep your code organized. Stylus can be integrated with your Drupal theme as well, and we'll discuss how to do that shortly. We’ll also talk about what makes Stylus more flexible than SCSS. What is Stylus CSS Preprocessor Stylus is a CSS preprocessor, which allows you to write CSS in a more dynamic way. It was initially released in 2010 as an open-source project. Stylus gained attention for its minimalist syntax as it is clean, without semicolons and brackets. The latest version is v0.63.0. Compared with SASS, it's newer as the first SASS release made its way to the market in 2006. Why Stylus over SCSS Stylus has a more minimalist syntax compared to SCSS. It allows you to omit brackets and colons and relies on indentation instead of braces and semicolons. Installing Stylus CSS Preprocessor To install Stylus on a local machine, ensure you have Node.js and npm installed, then run the following command: npm install stylus –gCompile Stylus files to CSS files: stylus stylus/index.styl -o css/Add the Stylus Watcher: stylus -w stylus/index.styl -o css/Installation in Drupal Theme It's simple and easy to use Stylus in any CSS-based Drupal theme. First, install Stylus on your local machine using the command provided above. After successful installation, create a folder named ‘stylus’ to hold all files with the .styl extension. There should also be a CSS folder to contain the compiled CSS files. Once both folders and files are ready, run the following command: stylus -w stylus/index.styl -o css/In the case of Stylus, we don’t need to configure any JS file like we do when using a GULP CSS preprocessor. How Stylus is more flexible than SCSS Indentation-based, Less Syntax, More Flexibility: Stylus is indentation-based. Whitespaces are significant, so we substitute the curly braces ({...}) with an indent, which allows us to omit semicolons, braces, and colons as shown in the following code snippet. Example: body color white Built-in Functions: Stylus comes with a rich set of built-in functions for tasks like color manipulation, mathematical operations, and more.    • unit(value, units) - Which converts the specified value to the specified units eg unit(10px, em)   • to-em(value) - Converts the specified value from pixels to em units.   • to-px(value) - Converts the specified value from em units to pixels. Integrated Units: Stylus supports integrated units, which means you can perform calculations with mixed units (e.g., 2px + 1em) without converting them manually. This can be convenient for responsive design and other scenarios where you need to work with different units in your stylesheets. Example: body    width 100px + 1em Using CSS properties as variable lookup: CSS Property values can be used in the same selector. Example: H1  max-width: 100px width: (@max-width/2) Variables Scopes in Stylus: There are two types of variables you can define in Stylus: Local and Global. Variables declared within a block are local or block-scope variables. Global variables take precedence over local variables. Example:  primary-color = "green“ h1 primary-color = “red“ color primary-color h2 color primary-color  OUTPUT CSS:  h1 { color: red; } h2 { color: green } Variables in Stylus: Variables in Stylus are like normal identifier names; they can contain $. Therefore, the following variables are valid with or without $.  header1-font = 25px header2-font = 20px $header3-font = 20px  Stylus Mixins & it’s implémentation buttonmixin { border-radius: 25px; color: white; } button buttonMixin for Loop iteration: For loop iteration in Stylus allows us to harness basic programming features. Here's how we implement a for loop in Stylus:  size-1 = 30px size-2 = 24px size-3 = 20px for i in 1..3 h{i}   font-size: lookup('size-' + i)  The Output:  h1 {font-size: 30px;} h2 {font-size: 24px;}  h3 {font-size: 20px;} Stylus Functions: Functions are similar to mixins however functions return data mixins don’t. In Stylus we can declare and call functions like in any other programming language. widthCalculate(width1,padding1)  width1+padding1  divwidth:widthCalculate(100px,10)Func with Default Argument  widthCalculate(width1,padding1 = 20)  width1+padding1 If you would like to learn more about Stylus, check their documentation page here. Final Thoughts So there you have it—Stylus brings a breath of fresh air to your Drupal projects when it comes to managing CSS. Using Stylus enables you to style effortlessly with variables, nesting, and mixins. Are you revamping an existing theme or starting fresh? Our Drupal experts are here to bring your vision to life. Let's transform your website together. Explore our Drupal development services today and see how we can tailor Stylus to fit your project perfectly.

ADCI Solutions: What to do if a warehouse system displays the remaining stock incorrectly

<p>The online warehouse system of this <a href="https://www.adcisolutions.com/work/online-inventory?utm_source=planetdrupal%26utm_medium=rss_feed%26utm_campaign=online_inventory">Drupal-powered online store</a> calculated the remaining stock of different suppliers incorrectly. The culprit was a custom code and an erroneously configured search. Here's how we fixed this and other issues along the way.</p><img data-entity-uuid="11ac02b3-fd6f-49e7-98f2-4edf245de63c" data-entity-type="file" src="https://www.adcisolutions.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/online-warehouse-management-system.png" width="1346" height="922" alt="online warehouse system drupal">

Talking Drupal: Talking Drupal #457 - Drupal Architecture

Today we are talking about Drupal Architecture, Common Site Building questions, and How we solve things with Drupal with guest Alexander Varwijk. We’ll also cover Drupal 10.3 as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/457

Topics
  • Where do you start when thinking about a new site or feature.
  • Where is the line for extending vs forking
  • Do you have solutions that you default to when building a feature
  • Do you find people come to Drupal with specific third party requirements
  • What do you think about Headless
  • When do you choose to contribute a new module to Drupal
  • Will recipes change your architecture
  • How do you learn about new ways of doing things
  • Where did you get your username, are you the king of the Netherlands
Resources Guests

Alexander Varwijk - alexandervarwijk.com Kingdutch

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi Baddý Sonja Breidert - 1xINTERNET baddysonja

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

  • Brief description:
    • Have you been wanting to use Workspaces, Single Directory Components, Recipes, or the new admin menu in your Drupal site? The new Drupal 10.3 release is better for using all of these and more.
  • Module name/project name:
  • Brief history
    • How old: It was tagged on Jun 20 by catch of Tag1 and Third & Grove
  • Features and usage
    • In this new minor version, Workspaces is now declared stable, and Single Directory Components are now fully integrated into core, instead of being in an experimental module.
    • Drupal 10.3 also includes the new Access Policy API that was funded as part of the Pitchburgh process kicked off at DrupalCon Pittsburgh
    • The “super user” access policy that automatically grants user 1 every permission can now be turned off in services.yml
    • Also, Recipes and the new Navigation menu are available as experimental features
    • The Actions UI, Book, and Statistics modules are deprecated, and contrib projects are available
    • Install profiles can now be uninstalled, and new sites can be installed without any profile at all
    • 10.3 also includes a revision UI for taxonomy terms, and they can also be used with content moderation
    • All core-provided image styles now include WebP conversion
    • The state service now uses a cache collector for performance, which requires opt in within settings.php for existing sites
    • There are other performance improvements, including: POST requests are now render cacheable, duplicate queries during logins are avoided, and big pipe requests now avoid reading session from the database multiple times
    • With 10.3 developer can also make use of a new AJAX command to open a URL in a dialog, and a new DraggableListBuilderTrait, among a host of other changes
    • Of course, there are some additional deprecations, so the Project Update Bot has already been busy creating new MRs

Golems GABB: Leveraging AI and Machine Learning in Drupal

Leveraging AI and Machine Learning in Drupal Editor Mon, 07/01/2024 - 09:59

Dries Buytaert once predicted that AI bots would provide factual information and communicate with emotions and personality, offering more human-like interactions than websites.
Artificial intelligence technologies have recently begun to be actively used in various fields, including web development. But what exactly? Implementing AI into your Drupal-based website opens up vast opportunities to improve your business's efficiency, significantly improve your customers' service quality, and much more. In this article, you will learn how to achieve success by using AI and Machine Learning in Drupal.

The Drop Times: How AI Enhances Drupal: Smarter and More User-Friendly Websites

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has quickly become a cornerstone of technological innovation. But why is it needed, and how exactly is it changing our lives? To start, imagine a world where machines can predict what you want before you even ask for it. That's the promise of AI, and it's no longer a distant dream.

AI is reshaping industries by automating routine tasks, providing insights through data analysis, and enhancing user experiences with personalization. For instance, in healthcare, AI algorithms can analyze medical records to predict patient outcomes and suggest treatments, drastically improving care quality. In finance, AI-driven systems can detect fraudulent activities in real-time, safeguarding our money and financial data.

Moreover, AI impacts our daily lives more subtly. Think of how Netflix suggests shows you love or how Alexa can answer your questions and control your smart home. These AI-driven features are making life easier and more enjoyable.

Now, let’s introduce AI to Drupal, a powerful content management system (CMS) known for its flexibility and robust features. Integrating AI with Drupal opens new possibilities for web development, making websites smarter and more user-friendly. AI can analyze users' likes and tailor website content to their interests. This means two people visiting the same site might see different content based on their preferences, making their experience more engaging.

Customer support is another area where AI shines. AI chatbots on Drupal sites can answer questions instantly, providing support without making users wait. These chatbots learn from each interaction and improve over time.

AI can also help predict what users will do next. By analyzing user data, AI provides insights into trends and behaviours, helping site administrators make better decisions about content and marketing strategies.

AI is excitingly changing technology, making our lives easier and more efficient. When combined with Drupal, AI takes website development to the next level. From personalizing content and improving search to automating tasks and enhancing customer support, AI makes Drupal sites smarter and more responsive. As AI continues to evolve, it will bring even more improvements, making online experiences better for everyone.

Now, let's delve into the latest Drupal-related news stories and articles covered by The Drop Times:

Check out the article by Alka Elizabeth and Kazima Abbas, sub-editors at The Drop Times, on Drupal Developer Day Burgas. They share insights from the organizers Valery Lourie, Maria Totova-Cholakova, and Hristo Chonov, representing Drupal Bulgaria, as well as speakers Frederik Wouters and Klaus Purer. This year’s event gathered community members to discuss innovative sessions and projects, showcasing how this event is contributing to the future of Drupal.

Additionally, explore the transformative vision behind Drupal Starshot through the insights of Gábor Hojtsy and Pamela Barone with Alka Elizabeth. This ambitious initiative addresses Drupal's past criticisms by enhancing user experience and accessibility with innovative UI improvements and pre-packaged feature sets. Delve into the potential and challenges of Starshot and understand how the leadership team is steering Drupal towards a more user-friendly future.

In his article at The Drop Times, Jay Callicott explores the significance of understanding exponential growth, the transformative power of AI in development, and the critical role of prompt engineering. By harnessing AI tools like the DrupalAI modules, developers can innovate with unprecedented speed and efficiency, navigating the accelerating pace of change in the digital landscape.

Daniel Cothran and Nia Kathoni have introduced a new Drupal module, Views CSV Source, designed to streamline the process of displaying CSV data within Drupal sites. Released on March 5, 2024, and updated on June 25, 2024, this module addresses a common need among Drupal users: the ability to easily display spreadsheet data on a web page without the labour-intensive process of populating a database table. Read more about it here.

Hector Ignacio Iribarne has announced the upcoming Broward Drupal Meetup, scheduled for Wednesday, July 10, 2024, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM ET. Organized by Ofer Shaal, Jay Epstein, and Hector Iribarne, this user group meeting will take place online via Zoom. The meetup will focus on discussing Drupal Starshot.

The upcoming Network of European Drupal Associations (NEDA) meeting is scheduled for July 16, 2024, from 2:30 to 4:00 PM (Central European Time—Brussels). This virtual gathering aims to connect members of the Drupal community and local Drupal associations across Europe and beyond. The primary focus is sharing experiences, exploring ways to support each other with knowledge and resources, and discussing common challenges and solutions local associations face.

Don't miss Drupaladas #4 event, "PHPStan in your Projects," scheduled for June 28, 2024, at 12:30 p.m. CEST. This virtual meetup, hosted by Jose Luis Bellido Rojas, will be conducted through a Slack huddle in the #drupal-es channel and features a detailed exploration of PHPStan integration in Drupal projects, led by Alvaro J. Hurtado Villegas.

Drupal Camp Asheville 2024, scheduled for July 12-14, 2024, is just around the corner, with only two and a half weeks left until the event kicks off. As attendees arrive, organizers have arranged a special Thursday night baseball game on the evening of July 11 at the historic McCormick Field.

DrupalJam, held on June 12, 2024, at Fabrique Utrecht, brought together the Drupal community for a day of insightful talks and networking. For those who missed this anniversary edition, the event's highlights are now available on the DrupalJam YouTube channel. The channel has uploaded Dries Buytaert's keynote speech and various insightful sessions for viewers to enjoy. It also features an after-movie capturing the event's atmosphere and memorable moments.

Looking ahead, Drupal Gutenberg v4.0, set for release in August 2024, will feature a major UI refactor specifically tailored for Drupal, moving away from WordPress components. It will introduce single-field editing and make the editor entity agnostic, allowing for editing various content types. The update will also integrate with the Drupal Starshot initiative, enhancing the overall Drupal editing experience.

CKEditor recently announced the release of five new plugins for Drupal users, coinciding with the launch of Drupal 10.3. These updates include the CKEditor 5 Plugin Pack 1.1.0 and CKEditor 5 Premium Features 1.2.9, featuring essential technical fixes and new functionalities to enhance content creation.

We acknowledge that there are more stories to share. However, due to selection constraints, we must pause further exploration for now.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you,
Sincerely,
Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor, The Drop Times