Drupal 8 Upcoming Features

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Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

description

This presentation by Hassan Bawab at BadCamp.net in Berkeley, CA. The presentation discusses the changes made by Drupal from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8. Also the presentation discusses why to choose Drupal and what is the difference between Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress.

Transcript of Drupal 8 Upcoming Features

Page 1: Drupal 8 Upcoming Features

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

Page 2: Drupal 8 Upcoming Features

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

Hassan Bawab Founder and CEO of Magic Logix www.magiclogix.com Twitter: @HassanBawab LinkedIn: @HassanBawab Wikipedia: @Hassan_Bawab

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Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, it is Different.

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

One of the major roadblocks to Drupal's growth was that companies had a hard time finding enough Drupal talent.

One reason for this lack of talent, was that

Drupal had shied away from object-oriented programming, the kind of code most programmers are familiar with.

Instead, Drupal used procedural programming,

and Drupal 7 was particularly complex because of its heavy reliance upon structured arrays.

 

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Why it is Different!

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

By contrast, Drupal 8 uses a Symfony2 framework. This new framework means that the nodes, modules, fields and views of Drupal are now all arranged in object-oriented design patterns, which will be more familiar to Drupal novitiates who are familiar with other types of programming.

I hope that Symfony2 will make future software updates faster and easier. The downside of switching to a more traditional, object-oriented approach is that developers who were familiar with previous versions of Drupal but not very familiar with object-oriented programming are likely to face a very steep learning curve.

 

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Important Core Module Changes -1

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

In previous versions of Drupal, including Drupal 7, it was necessary to add a number of contributed modules to the core module just to create an average, garden-variety website. Several new modules have been added to the Drupal 8 core module that eliminate the need for adding these contributed (or "contrib" in Drupal-speak) modules. Here's a list of some of the key Drupal 8 core improvements:

v  CKEditor: One of the top complaints that Drupal

developers have is its lack of a good WYSIWYG editor. CKEditor comes with Drupal 8. Although its default setting is set to disabled, developers are cheering to see the editor included within the core.

v  Views: Before Drupal 8, the Views module was the No.

1 contributed Drupal module being used by developers. Adding Views to the core is another Drupal 8 change that developers are very enthusiastic about.

 

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Important Core Module Changes -2

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

v  Picture: The Picture module, which is one of many new modules that have HTML5 and responsive design in mind, automatically resizes images for different screen sizes.

v  New Types: email, telephone, date, link, etc…

 

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Drupal Mobile Initiative

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

When Drupal 7 was released in 2011, mobile website use was just beginning to hit its stride. Web developers quickly got busy creating responsive, adaptive and mobile-only versions of their websites. In my opinion, Drupal 7 was not as ready for mobile as I would have liked it to be. If I had to start Drupal from scratch, I would have created it with mobile in mind first. The "mobile first" design philosophy has taken hold all over the Web, and I was expecting that Drupal 8 would not be left behind. "Drupal Mobile Initiative” makes sure the new release was ready for mobile users, both from the point of view of mobile developers and from the point of view of mobile website users.

 

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Drupal Mobile Initiative by John Albin Wilkins

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

When Wilkins took the lead for the Mobile Initiative, he outlined five major points that he wanted the next version of Drupal to cover: 1. Drupal should have the ability to support native apps.

2. Drupal should support HTML5 and web apps. 3. Web developers should be able to easily create content from their mobile devices. 4. Every core theme should be a responsive theme. 5. Front-end performance should be improved. (Source: http://palantir.net/blog/drupal-8-mobile-initiative) 

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Multilingual Support

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

Another big change for non-English speakers in Drupal 8 was its new multilingual support. In the past, developers had to download a number of different modules to help them translate Drupal into their native languages. Instead, a small number of modules was built into the Drupal core that vastly improved multilingual Drupal support. As of October 9, 2013, Drupal's development community was still working on the finishing touches for the Drupal 8 multilingual support.

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When & Why to Choose Drupal 8 -1

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

The first reason is cost. Drupal, like WordPress, Joomla and other open source CMSs, is completely free to install and use. Not only is the main body of Drupal free, almost all of its extensions are also free. There are plugins that cost money, just as there are for Joomla and for WordPress, but the majority of even very powerful Drupal modules are available from the development community free of charge. The second reason is another part of the "open source way" ethic: friendly community support. With nearly 800,000 developers worldwide and 330,000 Drupal websites already installed, developers can easily plug into an international community of Drupal users who stand ready to help. If help via Drupal forums and message boards isn't enough, however, paid professional support for Drupal also exists in the form of enterprise support offered by consultancies.

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When & Why to Choose Drupal 8 -2

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

The third reason is flexibility. Everything in Drupal 8, even its back-end interface, is customizable. The new core modules mentioned above, furthermore, make Drupal 8 even easier to customize than Drupal 7. Example; creating a custom administrative interface that would make the back-end of the Drupal site easy to work with for the non-techie administrators.

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When & Why to Choose Drupal 8 -3

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

The fourth reason applies specifically to eCommerce sites. When it comes to eCommerce, Drupal provides an excellent out-of-the-box solution. Many large eCommerce sites choose Drupal for its eCommerce modules, payment support and other benefits. Finally, the fifth reason is traffic. Drupal sites can handle heavy traffic, the kind of traffic sites like WhiteHouse.gov, UniversalMusic.com, Zynga.com, SpringCM.com, FrontRange.com and Duke.edu get. With a special built-in cache system that facilitates speed, Drupal can handle very high amounts of traffic without bogging the website down.

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CMS Comparison Summary -1

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

Use WordPress when: v  The site will be in the small to medium size range v  Designing and rolling out the site quickly is important v  The site is mostly informational in nature, such as a

blog, ezine or small company website v  Ease of use is very important v  The people who will be maintaining the site on a day-

to-day basis have very little technical ability Use Joomla when: v  The site will be in the small to large size range yet not

huge v  The site will include eCommerce, message boards and

password-protected material v  A full-featured site is needed but a dedicated IT staff is

not available v  Ease of use is semi-important .

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CMS Comparison Summary -2

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

Use Drupal 8 when: v  The site will start out big and will likely get bigger and

bigger over time v  The site will be developed by professionals v  The site needs to handle a complex variety of content

types, from multimedia to eCommerce v  Multilingual support is important v  Ease of use is not that important because there is a

dedicated IT staff to update and make changes the site As this summary shows, there is not one CMS that is the hands-down best choice in every situation. Of the three most popular platforms, Drupal is usually the best choice for sites that are large, complex, have big budgets and will be maintained by professionals.

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Drupal 8 Aims to Be Future-Proof

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

The future of the Web is a mobile future. Already, browsing the Internet on a smartphone is more common, at least for some demographics, than browsing the Internet on a desktop or laptop computer. Web developers have been scrambling to churn out responsive and adaptive website designs that take into account the unique needs of mobile users. The simple answer is that Drupal 8 has been specifically designed with mobile in mind. Dries Buytaert wants Drupal to be the very best CMS for mobile websites, period. Therefore, there are already a number of ready-made themes and modules for Drupal that are designed to specifically enhance a user's mobile experience. With Drupal 8, all the themes the out-of-the-box software ships with are responsive themes.

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Conclusion: Drupal 8 is the Best J

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

Drupal 8 is one of the best, if not the very best, open source web development platform for sites that will be large, have a high volume of traffic, that may or may not include eCommerce, that will have a number of different content types and that will grow over time. Smaller sites can be made with WordPress, and small to medium-size corporate sites can also be made with Joomla, but for premium design capabilities and technical capacity, Drupal is typically the better choice than either of these two CMSs. That might not always be the case; WordPress in particular has come a long way from its blog engine beginnings to where it is today. In short, however, big-budget website projects organized by developers with a high degree of coding literacy cannot go wrong with choosing Drupal 8.

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Conclusion: Drupal 8 is the Best J

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 | Phone: 214.694.2162 | Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

The improvements that Drupal 8 has made over Drupal 7 might take developers some time to get used to. As Buytaert himself stated, change can be scary. However, the Mobile Initiative, the changes to the Drupal core modules, the added language support and other features of Drupal 8 will be a great boon to developers once they get used to working with the new architecture. Thanks to changes like Symfony2, future versions of the platform should be easier to extend and easier to update. All of these meaningful changes that have gone into Drupal 8 are likely to secure the CMS' place in the online world for many years to come.