Articles: tips and tricks

Drupal coding speed tips, using an IDE

Tuesday, 01 February 2011

Do you use PHP print statements (and the Devel module) to inspect variables? Do you use php.net and api.drupal.org to search for information on certain functions? Guess what. You can do things much faster. Follow along and imagine what you could do with the time you win...

HTML5 + (aging browser - JS) = show stopper?

Tuesday, 25 January 2011

Here at krimson, we are working on our own super-duper start-theme. (Who's not, right?) In that quest for our holy grail, I did find some interesting tips and tricks I want to share. You've certainly heard about HTML5, and the new semantics this provides us. If you haven't, have a look at the magnificent keynote from Jeremy Keith at Drupalcon Copenhagen, called 'The design of HTML5'. At one brave day, I started to build a drupal theme, based on those new HTML5 elements. Very soon, a problem became clear: older browsers don't support those new semantic tags.

Downgrade PHP on Ubuntu

Thursday, 06 January 2011

You just upgraded or installed the latest version of Ubuntu (10.04 or 10.10) on your PC, but it comes with PHP 5.3 and for Drupal development this is not optimal. Why is this not optimal, because not all contrib modules are compatible with PHP 5.3. More information can be found on the Drupal website (PHP section).

Speed up Drupal module development with Eclipse hook templates

Saturday, 01 January 2011

Are you already using Eclipse as your IDE for drupal module development? If so, meet the 'Eclipse Drupal hook templates'. A XML file to import in your editor, including all drupal hooks.

Why Top Aligned Labels Are Better In Drupal Forms

Tuesday, 28 December 2010

When we encounter web forms, we want to spend as little time as possible on filling out forms and all sorts of questions. There are a lot of different layouts and designs in web forms. The layout of a web form might not seem important, especially the placement of labels. But, this one issue can make or break any form usage on the web.

Build a simple project tracker with Drupal

Tuesday, 30 November 2010

So, I needed some sort of case or issue tracker for a personal project. Nothing fancy, just something were I can manage ideas, features, bugs, forget-ye-nots,... without losing track. There are already some great tools out there. Standalone issue trackers like Mantis or Trac and on line services like Unfuddle are of great assistance for the intrepid developer or project team. Then again, those come with a lot of features which I, as a sole developer, don't really need.

Views: Searching multiple fields with one exposed filter

Saturday, 25 September 2010

Here's a nice little gem i've learned today. I needed to have one exposed filter search on multiple fields in views. Here's one way to get this working.

Mike from Drupal Easy visited the Krimson Krew

Tuesday, 27 July 2010

We had the pleasure to welcome Mike from Drupal Easy in our Krimson office this week. Mike has been working in Antwerp during the whole summer and is returning to his homebase in Florida next week.

Administration theme messing with your block configuration?

Thursday, 08 July 2010

In a recent project, I had the following problem: When I activated an administration theme other than the system's default (whether it was Garland or a different one), the block configuration page (/admin/build/block) would only display the administration theme's regions in the region drop down menus. Additionally, the block configuration page was always being displayed in the administration theme, while normally Drupal displays that page in the theme you're configuring blocks for. So, something was wrong.

Date module: Filling in the 'To'-date fields with the 'From'-date values using jQuery

Friday, 18 June 2010

When creating nodes in Drupal that have one or more date fields, it can be handy if the values for the 'To' date fields (date & time) are automatically changed to the values that were filled in the 'From' date fields. For example, when events take place on the same day, this can ease data input and make life easier for authors.