Unstandardized Design

This morning, I went to the Themer’s Toolkit session at DrupalCon.  I didn’t learn what I expected to learn - new things to use for theming, but I did find out about some sorely needed and interesting tools that I will document here.

Everyone knows about firebug, browsershots.org, and the devel module.  Also, css grids (blueprint, yahoo, 960gs, gridworks) have been talked about ad-nauseum.  The highlights though from this session were:

• Use version control!  This is a lesson that I’ve been reluctant to learn, it seems like I never have the time to spend on learning version control.  It’s always something I’ll do eventually.  Well, Emma was all about the Bazaar Version Control System.  Apparently it is a “distributed version control system,” which somehow means that you don’t need to be connected to the internet to use it.  It is totally free, and is good for working alone or in groups.  It is also Windows, Linux, and OS X friendly.  Best of all, its “NOT SCARY!”  Sounds perfect!  She recommended this article on bazaar for web developers to get started.
• In terms of IDE’s, I heard alot about NetBeans, which apparently has a drupal plugin.  I’ll have to check that out as well.
• Someone in the audience made a great point - white text on a black background is much easier on your eyes compared to black on white.  Now if only I could find that negative screen function that I had in linux on these windows machines I’m working on…
• Emma typically starts from the zen theme, which is apparently very easy and handy to do with Drupal 6.  I can’t wait to start making Drupal 6 sites - its finally ready!