Blogs
This week the following stories caught our attention. Enjoy!
Marketing
Mashable: 'Epicurious' Enrages Followers With Boston Bombings Tweets
In the aftermath of Monday's horrific events at the Boston Marathon one brand managed to outsmart itself. It just makes you wonder why showing poor taste during tragedies repeatedly appears to be a "great opportunity" to spread you message.
Design
.net magazine: Hover is dead, long live hover
Advancement in technology can mean the decline of a trusted friend. This article takes a look at destiny of hover states.
Medium: Why you should move that button 3px to the left
Braden Kowitz argues that as fussy as pointing out minor design bugs might appear, in the big picture it can make a difference. Nevertheless it has to be a long-term mindset and not just about pothole fixing.
Drupal
Cafuego: Sponsorship Success Metric
Peter Lieverdink, a Melbourne based Drupal contributor, gives an alternative view why sponsoring a DrupalCon isn't a waste of money.
Behind the Scenes
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This past weekend (April 13th & 14th) was the 2nd-annual Frontend United Conference. Last year it was held in Amsterdam — this year in London (at a hip, laid-back venue called Cargo). And as the Brits would say: It was brilliant!
Frontend United is geared towards frontend devs looking to sharpen their theming skills and learn new technologies in the frontend world of Drupal.
The conference has a different feel than a typical DrupalCon, despite a similar scheduling format. Because the event is smaller and narrowly focused, attendees share many interests and questions pertaining to their jobs. The talks are extra-relevant and timely. And because the conference is tailored to a very specific type of "Drupalista," the sessions are more conceptual, innovative, and advanced.
The following images are a few nice visuals taken from the conference:
Above, Lewis Nyman begins his presentation on Responsive Web Design, during which he suggests, "Split individual page design into manageable areas: layout, content, and aesthetics."
This dark and moody shot is from @MortenDK's "Angry Themer" session, although Morten admits he has become less "angry" with the introduction of Twig in Drupal 8. Yeah, it is going to be THAT awesome. :)
Here, Leisa Reichelt shares the workflow changes she's instated during her career working alongside organizations to help improve their online customer experiences. This session was especially inspiring as she made some excellent, real-world cases for re-evaulating your company's current project processes. She concludes a frontend developer can be a real asset to an information architect during the wire-framing and design phase.
And just for fun, here are a few more photographic take-aways:
Rosemary Lane, a fantastic dining experience and Saturday evening full of wonderful company and new friends.
Graffiti outside Cargo — the full text reads "SCARY." :)
For more pictures of the weekend make sure to check out the Flickr-set, while other media of the event can be found here. And for any news related to next year's conference... I suggest you keep an eye on the Frontend United website.
This week's five stories stem from the world of finance, technology and marketing. Hopefully something down your lane. Enjoy!
Finance
If you didn't get the buzz surrounding Bitcoin this week, Duncan Elms' excellent explanation will bring you up to date. For the ones new to the financial markets we'd like to add this article on the Tulip Mania.
Zurich
Züri wie neu
In late 2010 Zurich's city council launched an e-participation contest where all citizens were invited to contribute their ideas. This week one of the winning project suggestions, a "FixMyStreet" for Zurich, was released.
Technology
Google Street View Hyperlapse
Hyperlapse videos, an evolution out of the traditional time lapse video, are certainly a growing trend. The guys from Teehan+Lax tried to merge the technique with Google Street View and clearly succeeded in doing so. Try it, it's fun.
Opinion
.net Magazine: What the new TLDs mean for brands and consumers
Later this year a bunch of new top-level domains (TLD) make their public appearance on the world wide web. Roland LaPlante, Chief Marketing Officer at Afilias, gives his view on the significance of the possibilities.
Tweets that cut through the noise
Spot on, Sir!
Best. Flowchart. EVER! #ias13 twitter.com/jcolman/status…
— Jonathon Colman (@jcolman) April 7, 2013
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We're happy to announce the launch of a new client project: Switzerland Global Enterprise.
Despite the successful partnership we have barely shed any light into the work we have done for this great organization. Formerly known as OSEC, the organization represents the interests of Switzerland's export industry, import program and in a third function manages the country's location promotion efforts. In order to streamline the public appearance of these units, the organization opted to rebrand.
From a technical point of view the trusted foundation of Drupal 6 only underwent minor changes, since the focus of this release lays on the necessary adjustments to meet the organization's new corporate design.
Since the page's initial release, a blog with enhanced community features, it has grown to handle 35,000 nodes in four different languages. In the meantime it has incorporated the organization's old web site in order to become their main presence on the world wide web. This makes Switzerland Global Enterprise the perfect show case to illustrate the versatility which Drupal possesses.
Sportsnet, a Canadian sports broadcaster, has recently relaunched their web presence. The pièce de résistance of the relaunch appears to be the new responsive features of the site, for which they have created an own TV advert.
Dear Reader, this week's edition takes a look at a dispute in the world of web design approaches, how coding will be part of many childhood memories and a humorous take on how a Facebook Home could look like.
Responsive Web Design
Six Revisions: Responsive Web Design is Not the Future
Josh Chan, a Melbourne based Senior Digital Specialist, launched an attack on the responsive web design approach while claiming it is just a fad.
Brad Frost: A Response to ‘Responsive Web Design is Not the Future’
This lead one of the subject's thought leaders to take a moment to reflect on the criticism on his blog.
Infographic
An issue which probably isn't exclusive to the Drupal ecosystem.
Opinion
.net Magazine: Advice for my unborn daughter
Garrett Heath makes a point that coding will become a normal part of children education just as piano practice or dance lessons are.
Last but not least
The Joy of Tech: If Facebook made a real Facebook Home..
While Facebook announced their latest product, in collaboration with HTC, the popular geek comic site imagines how the social networking service would do in the real estate business.
(Screenshot: The Jungle Book, 1967. [Film] Directed by Wolfgang Reitherman. USA: Disney)
A while ago we wrote about the Drupal 6 modules you really need. Since that post a few things have changed, on one hand Drupal 7 has moved a bunch of those modules to its core, while on the other hand some were replaced by better alternatives.
Of course every Drupal site we build has different requirements, which makes our choice of contributed modules unique for every project. Nevertheless here is our current selection of trusted Drupal modules we don't want to miss. The bare necessities, if you will.
Internationalization & Entity translation
Working in a country, that has four officially recognized languages and English being the Internet's lingua franca, we install these modules without thinking anymore. Multilingual solutions have come on leaps and bounds since previous Drupal releases and despite not being perfect yet they make our lives much easier.
Pathauto
Regardless of how much attention you want to give to search engine optimization in a project - getting the basics right is essential. Pathauto enables you to create URL patterns for all entity types. The Pareto principle will thank you.
Views
This is by far the most powerful module in the Drupal ecosystem. Built on the Chaos tool suite (ctools), it gives the full control to display any kind of entity in the manner you want it. No wonder it will be part Drupal 8's core.
Devel
If you are a developer this one can help you out of the odd pickle. It allows you to gather information on what is happening in Drupal's background. Just remember to disable it on productive environments.
Wysiwyg & CKEditor
Until the day arrives where everybody is a HTML wizard, WYSIWYG editors will remain a feature, which just belong to every Drupal installation.
Google Analytics
The quickest and easiest way to make your websites visits quantifiable. You can only manage what you can measure.
Panels
Need a complex layout on the quick? Panels will be your trusted friend. You can define layout templates and define in which contexts they should appear.
Display Suite / Panelizer
Depending on the level of complexity of our brief we will opt for one of these two masters of data display control. Although both have their pros and cons we tend to use Panelizer more often, since it's benefits can be leveraged on large and complex websites.
Rules
An amazing module, built upon the Entity API, which allows you to define workflows and actions while you barely have to write any code. It integrates into many modules witch makes it a powerful and useful resource.
Webforms
You can argue that allowing visitors to create nodes with appropriate field permissions can act a contact forms - we have seen this approach in the wild... In our opinion using the Webforms module is the better option for the majority of use cases where a form is needed. You don't want your content overview screen cluttered with spam that got through Mollom's net, right?
What do you think? What are your bare necessities?
This week the stories that caught our attention range from the myth of the intuitive interface, an odd request and some inspiration what you can do over Easter. Enjoy!
Drupal
Frontend United 2013
If 'Responsive with Drupal', 'Interactive maps / visuals' and 'Twig' 'CSS / HTML / LESS / SaSS / JS / BBQ' are your cup of tea, make sure to secure a ticket. This year's edition of the Drupal frontend developer's conference, will take place in the übercool part of London that is Shoreditch. Our @kcornelius and @daniagerhardt will be there too.
Opinion
Co.Design: Why ‘Intuitive’ Interface Is A Myth
Timoni West, a designer at Foursquare, makes a point that teaching new interactions shouldn't be frowned upon. Just don't make the learning curve steep.
Gadgets
Gizmodo: The First 6 People Who’ll Get Google Glass
This week Google announced their first picks of their #IfIHadGlass campaign. Safe to say that they went for a quite diverse mix.
Knowledge is porridge
Quora: What is something useful I can learn right now in 10 minutes that would be useful for the rest of my life?
Not sure what to do over Easter? Here's a list of things you can expand your horizon with.
Tweets that cut through the noise
Paul Haddad, software developer and creator of Tweetbot, had his mind boggled by a "customer's" request.
The little faith I have in humanity is somewhat restored. twitter.com/tapbot_paul/st…
— Paul Haddad (@tapbot_paul) March 26, 2013
(Photo by PierreEmmanuelBOITON)
Last night, again, Web Monday Zurich stopped at the HUB. The 120 seats were gone within minutes - making it the fastest sold-out Web Monday Zurich of all siblings.
The presentations saw Emma Page of Evernote on the process of idea to product at the note taking service. Matthew Perkins and Alex Wimbush introduced the social network Yield Pop, which tries to leverage social media in the agricultural industry. Lukas Brüderlin and Richard Sewell from ic21 presented iCompare. Their service promises to find the best mobile phone deal in Switzerland for you.
Special thanks to Evernote for sponsoring this edition's location and the refreshments.
Pages
Latest comments
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infojunkie
Thanks for using Views Auto-Refresh and glad it's working out for you! The new version at http://drupal.org/project/views_autorefresh now uses an area handler to allow site builders to set it up. It should be functionally equivalent to the Views Hacks version, in addition to the bug fixes that went into it since it moved.
Permalink22.05.2013
Win a ticket for the "Mobile Trends Konferenz" at ONE Schweiz
1(Photo: Pedro Lozano)
The 2nd edition of Switzerland's trade fair for Internet, e-commerce, social media and online marketing ONE will take place on the 15 and 16 of May in Zurich. Like last year there will be a technology conference simultaneously taking place. At this conference our Head Technology Michael Schmid will be presenting in the Thursday afternoon slot.
With a further year's experience under his belt he will follow up on last year's "Responsive Web Design: Implementierung Dos & Don'ts" presentation. Having successfully released several responsive sites in the last twelve months, he will be able to provide valuable information on what to expect when launching a device agnostic site.
The other three presentations feature subjects like usability and esthetics, mobile first and what users love and hate.
If you want to attend his and the other presentations in that slot you can either purchase a ticket or try your luck in our giveaway.
For your chance to win a free admission (worth CHF 295) to the "Mobile Trends Konferenz" simply subscribe for our newsletter. The winner will be picked among all Newsletter subscribers by Monday 13 May at lunch time (CET). Good luck!
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