Emma Jane Hogbin (emmajane), Drupal author, trainer, and all-around superstar of all things Drupal (as well as a bunch of non-Drupal things) joins Andrew Riley and Mike Anello on the first episode of 2013! The trio discusses Emma Jane’s Drupal writing career, recent training events, Drupal 8, and also takes a look back at their favorite Drupal “thing” of 2012. They also say “aloha” to CKEditor, getting off the Drupal island, the most followed Drupal.org issues, and take a sneak peak at Drupal 9. Not leaving well-enough alone, they also make some picks of the week!

Five-ish Stories

1. Emma Jane Hogbin interview - Front End Drupal book, Drupal User’s Guide book, Digital Drupal workbooks, PHP for Real Drupal Developers course, Lorna Jane Mitchell’s PHP Master book 
2. Drupal 2012 Highlights
   • Emma Jane - DrupalCon Code of Conduct 
   • Andrew - Drupal core office hours 
   • Mike - Drupal Commerce
3. From Aloha to CKEditor blog post from Dries
4. Getting off the island in 2013 blog post from Larry Garfield, Sunshine PHP Conference
5. Most followed Drupal.org issues tweet by Angie Byron
6. Drupal 9 tweet by Dries

DrupalEasy News

DrupalCon Sydney pre-conference training: Blue Collar Git - Wednesday, February 6, 2013.

Picks of the Week

• Mike - Conditional Fields module by Gregorio Magini (peterpoe)
• Andrew - Visualising the drupal development history by Dave Hall
• Emma Jane - NodeSquirrel

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Site of the Week

If you'd like your site highlighted, please submit it at http://DrupalEasy.com/siteoftheweek.

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This weekend I participated in the Brevard Code Sprint for the MediaFront Module. I must admit, being new to Drupal, it did cross my mind that I’d be more of a hinderance than a help. I couldn’t have been more mistaken! The dozen folks from the Drupal community were great to work with. To start us off, Travis Tidwell (travist), the MediaFront module maintainer, walked us through a demonstration of the module and Mike Anello (ultimike), of the code sprint sponsor DrupalEasy, facilitated the group in choosing assignments to work on. As he asked for volunteers to work on some novice code issues, I figured “No better time to learn, than when surrounded with help!” so I dove right in. With the help of some great new friends, at the end of the day I had created my first patch and was well on my way to my first commit!

We discussed some problems that the module was having and created the issue to Hide the full-screen button when they have controller only mode enabled. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll just show ya... it looked like this:

In working on fixing the problem we came up with a fix, but then realized the fix corrected the problem but left the look of the item needing reformatted because it just made a big space where the button was ... another chance to learn! I got some new GIT experience creating the patch, which fixed the problem and made the item look good. Making that contribution, encouraged me to look for other coding issues that I would never had even thought about attempting before going to this code sprint. I know you’re wondering so I’ll show you the fix:

If you are new to Drupal and trying to learn it on your own, I can’t encourage you enough to seek out these code sprints, DrupalCamps or DrupalCon community events no matter what your experience level. Everyone was so willing to answer any question I had or point me in the right direction to get over my hurdle. At times there were two of us side-by side working on one screen figuring out the best way to tackle an issue and there were times they let me do it on my own to learn at my own pace. In that one day I feel so much more confident in my Drupal understanding and much more comfortable asking for help. I’ve started some new relationships and strengthened some other ones.

The first-ever Brevard County Drupal Code Sprint took place on Sunday, December 16, 2012 at the Cocoa Village Civic Center. A total of 12 sprinters attended in-person, along with 2 virtual attendees who joined in via IRC and a Google+ Hangout. The sprint was in support of the MediaFront module, a front-end media solution that provides HTML5-based media players for supported browsers and falls back to a Flash-based player when necessary. The MediaFront module maintainer, Travis Tidwell (travist), could not have been more accomodating and helpful, as he participated in the sprint for 10 straight hours.

The sprint was a success; we were able to improve the MediaFront’s documentation, fix some bugs, perform some structured testing of the module in various operating systems and browsers, and make some progress on several other issues. DrupalEasy was proud to sponsor the sprint, providing the facilities, drinks, and snacks for the participants.

As many of the sprinters were new to the MediaFront module, we started off the day with an overview of the module’s functionality. Travis led a walkthrough that included simple use cases involving uploaded and hosted videos, numerous examples of setting up playlists, as well as some of the advanced features of the module including player-to-player communication.

Once everyone understood the basics of the module and set up a local development/testing environment (consisting of a fresh copy of Drupal 7 and the latest -dev version of the MediaFront module), the sprint participants were split into roughly three groups: documentation, issue queue triage, and testing. As our group of sprinters didn’t include too many hardcore developers, we decided to focus on these three areas.

The documentation group was involved in reviewing the existing documentation, making sure it was up-to-date with the latest version of the module. Many additions and fixes were made to the documentation, including:

• Main documentation page
• Installation and initial setup
• Configuring playlists using Views
• Creating and configuring presets

Additionally, documentation for two other use cases was started (but not yet published):

• Using Mediafront with Media, Colorbox, and Media Colorbox modules to allow multiple videos (personal, youtube, and vimeo) to be played in Colorbox popup on the node details page 
• Adding YouTube videos automatically to a MediaFront playlist using Feeds module.

The issue queue triage group was tasked with going through as many of the 7.x-2.x issues as possible, with the goal of either responding to support requests, trying to duplicated reported bugs, or closing out obsolete issues. A total of 28 issues were closed, with activity on an additional 21 issues.

The last group focused on rigorous testing of the module to ensure that the proper player (HTML5 or Flash) was being used depending on the operating system, browser, and media file to be displayed. Numerous bugs were found and fixed during this process. One of the more important bugs that was squashed was for the case when multiple media files of different formats are uploaded to a multi-valued file field. The MediaFront module now selects the best file format for the browser. For example, when both an .ogv and .mp4 file are available to Firefox, the .ogv file is used to display the video in a HTML5 player. Once all the tests are complete, this compatibility chart will be added to the MediaFront documentation on Drupal.org.

Work was also done on various miscelleanous tasks:

• Hide the full-screen button when controller-only mode enabled
• Make the “show player when empty” checkbox default to not checked
• Squashed bug with jQuery UI version discrepancies
• Outlined future enhancements for better interoperability with Media module’s file entities
• Moved the configuration page from “Structure” to “Configuration” 

Overall, both the participants and the maintainer were happy with the results. The participants were able to dive deep into the module’s functionality (with Travis available all day to answer any and all questions), contribute back to the community, and sharpen their skills, Travis was able to take advantage of a significant number of people helping to improve one of his modules. We’ve already started talking about the next Brevard County Drupal Sprint (although we’re thinking about changing the name to the Drupal Mosquito Control, Florida Bug Squad, Florida Bug Zappers, or something similar) for as early as next month - everyone is excited to continue their work with the MediaFront module and to give back to the Drupal community! 

List of sprinters:

• Ben Hosmer (bhosmer)
• Caroline Achee (cachee)
• Cielo Johnson (C13L0)
• Dennis Solis (densolis)
• Doug Hercules (dhercjr)
• James Dinsmore (jamesthequack)
• Maggie Ardito (marguerite)
• Marcia Buckingham (acmaintainer)
• Melissa Gwaldis (oystercrackher)
• Mike Anello (ultimike)
• Natalie Roberts (anzi31)
• Paula Owen (owenpaula)
• Tierra Renthrope (IvoryTierra)
• Travis Tidwell (travist)

Git’s a ripper Version Control System, and considering its growing adoption, you can’t afford to be a drongo when it comes to leveraging it. No worries though, just head on over to Sydney the day before DrupalCon kicks off, take DrupalEasy’s action-packed Blue Collar Git training, and Bob’s yer uncle! 

The Yank (that’d be me) from DrupalEasy is putting on this fast-paced workshop that’ll help you master Git and get gobsmacked at how much more effective you get as a Drupal developer, themer or project manager. Git’s a dinky-di super speedy and efficient version control system. Unlike the others, Git’s got a distributed approach, which gives it an edge for collaborative development, and why its adoption is going flat chat.  What’s more, as it grows, being comfy with it becomes not just a valuable tool, but a handy talent to brag about as its becoming a popular preference on job posts. 

Blue Collar Git will start just after brekkie with the basics and a look around under the bonnet, then delve into remote repositories, resolving conflicts, and working with patches in the arvo. We’ve designed Blue Collar Git to be just the script you need to empower you to start leveraging it for your everyday workflow.

This unique workshop came about from a video of the 2010 Open Source Developers Conference session "Git for Ages 4 and Up" by Michael Schwern. His Tinker toy demo helped me soak up the Git knowledge, and motivated me to teach it using a similar method. Great feedback from various Git-related meetups and camp presentations and trainings inspired the full-blown training course.

The workshop runs the full day of February 6, the day before DrupalCon at the Crowne Plaza. The cost is only $440 for the full day (includes lunch!). This is our first time bringing a DrupalEasy workshop to Oz, so we’re hoping for a bonzer of a turnout! Get on the bush telegraph and grab a Drupal mate to spend the day soaking up insight and doing lots of hands-on learning. Head to the DrupalCon Sydney site to sign up for this corker of a training course!