Heather Brooke Drummond: Drupal 8 – A Front End Developer's Perspective

Heather Brooke Drummond, Senior Front End Developer, joins us to share her perspective of Drupal 8 and why she's a disciple. Note: While we have updated the transcript below to accurately reflect Heather's name, the recorded audio has not been updated.
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Guest
Heather Brooke Drummond

Senior Front End Developer

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Highlights

What is your favorite new front end feature in D8?

Any pleasant surprises about D8?

Which Drupal issue in the queue on drupal.org do you want resolved tomorrow?

Semantic versioning.

Transcript

Note: The transcript below accurately reflects Heather's name, although it does not match the recorded audio, which has not been updated.

JONATHAN FREED: Hello! You’re listening to a TEN7 Audiocast. We are here today to discuss a front-end developer’s reactions to Drupal 8. I’m Jonathan Freed, and I’m here with Ivan Stegic, founder and president of TEN7, and our special guest, Heather Brooke Drummond from Lullabot, a global strategy, design and development company. Hello and welcome.

HEATHER BROOKE DRUMMOND: Howdy.

IVAN STEGIC: Hello. Heather, we’re just gonna jump right into this. So first question, what is your favorite new front-end feature in Drupal 8?

HEATHER: Well, I’m a big fan of Twig. So I just finished working on my first big Drupal 8 project. and Twig came in handy, and it’s a lot simpler than working with PHP templates. It’s nice for front-end developers because it’s more secure; the ball’s not necessarily on you to keep everything secure. It’s a straightforward templating language, keep things really clear. Corollary to that is that the other system that I think is great for front-end developers is the library system that allows you to add CSS and Javascript to individual pages, to individual components. Globally, it’s a very flexible system that adds a lot to the capabilities we have. 

I’m really excited with layouts going into core. Layouts are gonna be a huge tool for component-based theming, or possibly. It’s gonna be a new thing to try out. So, that’s really exciting. The other thing is, object-oriented – more of an object-oriented nature for the theming process in Drupal. There’s been a big move to object-oriented code in Drupal 8 overall, but that’s not as true for the theming portions of it.

IVAN: Has anything pleasantly surprised you about D8?

HEATHER: I’ve found as somebody who comes from the front-end development side of things, I can do way more on the back-end than I feel like I used to be able to do.

JONATHAN: Which issue in the queue on Drupal.org do you most want resolved tomorrow?

HEATHER: The issue I had picked out here is 2061377 and I’m sure you know that issue by heart. So this is an issue that is allowing image styles to be selected within when you’re placing images with WYSIWYG, the CK editor and I’ve worked on this issue for a really long time and I got stuck on it and I kinda fell off working on that like a year ago and it still hasn’t gone in and it would be cool because it will allow responsive images and other image styles to work within WYSIWYG. I think it might end up being obviated by the work that’s being done to put media into core so maybe it doesn’t, but for my peace of mind, since I got stuck on that issue so long, if I could snap my fingers, I’d feel so great that that issue is completed. 

JONATHAN: Is there anything you’d like to add that we may have missed?

HEATHER: One of the most exciting things about Drupal 8 is the semantic versioning and the ability to add in new features to Drupal as we go. Drupal is getting better and better as we’re going on.

IVAN : Yeah, the experimental stuff.

HEATHER: Yeah, all the experimental things that are gonna, you know. The content moderation, the layout stuff, the media stuff, all those things that are on the way into being solidifying core… Those things make Drupal a way better product out of the box, and will make it a lot easier for people to set-up Drupal sites. And just the fact that that can happen without the 5 year gap is enormous.

JONATHAN: That brings us to the end of this Audiocast. And I would like to thank Heather Brooke Drummond and Ivan Stegic for sharing their insights on Drupal 8 front end development. Please visit us at ten7.com, and keep an eye out on the TEN7 blogs for future audiocasts. This is Jonathan Freed, and thank you again for listening.

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