Drupal 7 First Look Review

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Drupal 7 First Look ReviewI've had the chance to read another Packt Publishing title called Drupal 7 First Look by Mark Noble. I thought I would put down a few thoughts.
I lead Drupal administration and development training on a fairly regular basis and I'm always a little sensitive to instructional books. It's not easy teaching through literature and it's especially difficult to connect the right learner to the right level of literature to be useful to learning. That has been my complaint with many of the Packt titles in the last two years. The top notch authors are very attractive to Drupal learners, but those authors present their concepts with an assumption that readers have the right background. With Noble's book, the intended audience is clearly defined and makes this book more effective that the other's I've read. I have considered including this book as part of the student training material package for workshops I lead.
For the Drupal site administrators who are intending to make the transition to Drupal 7 soon, this will be a great resource. Many of the new admin level features and methods are exposed and the screenshots are useful. The installation walkthrough would be helpful for those who haven't tried it themselves, though it was a little brief. Explanations of the new core modules were great.
The real value comes in the later chapters when Noble breaks down the API changes for developers. Chapter 7 describes some very specific API improvements within Drupal that will impact the work of many developers throughout the community - this chapter is a great guide to updating your own Drupal 6 modules. Theme changes are covered well in earlier chapters, too.
Altogether, I think the book is presented well to the administrator and developer level Drupal users. It would not be useful to new Drupal users as it skirts around some of the fundamentals of the software, but there are other books in Packt's catalog that would be good for that.Drupal 7 First Look OverviewThis hands-on guide takes a look at the main functional areas of Drupal that have significant new features. It explains these new features and how to use them, drawing attention to significant differences from how things used to behave, and giving the reader an idea of the kind of consequences these changes will bring to them. Drupal 7 First Look is written for site administrators, themers, and developers who have some experience with Drupal 6 (or even Drupal 5) and want to upgrade their sites, themes, or modules to Drupal 7 or just learn more about Drupal 7. No programming experience is required, but several code examples are covered for readers that want more in-depth information about building themes and modules.

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Drupal 7 Review

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Drupal 7 ReviewA lot of time has passed between when this book was written and today. That also means a lot has changed in the development of Drupal 7. Reading this book is like playing a guessing game of how the Drupal developers changed things between the Alpha version of Drupal 7 (against which this book was written) and the current release candidates and actual releases.
I can tell you that over 50% of the content in this book is either **wrong** or **irrelevant** unless you intend on using an old Alpha version of Drupal 7 in production (not a good idea). This book was clearly written in an opportunistic way to capitalize on the upcoming release of Drupal 7 without any regard to its relevance once Drupal 7 actually comes out. I for one think it's a shameful way to write books and even though I have never written a review on this site, I felt compelled to warn others. The author should apologize for wasting my time and the time of any other poor sap who spent hard-earned money on this waste of paper.Drupal 7 OverviewThe approach of this book has been revised and updated for Drupal 7 based on comments from thousands of readers. The book takes a pragmatic look at the steps necessary to get a website up and running. Drawing on years of writing experience, David Mercer utilizes a friendly, engaging style that is both clear and concise-perfect for the Drupal newbie. This book is for people with little or no experience in website design, people who are not necessarily familiar with PHP, MySQL or HTML, and above all people with little to no experience in using Drupal.

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Drupal 7 Module Development Review

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Drupal 7 Module Development Review(Full disclosure: The publisher of this book sent me a review copy)
This book will serve as a tremendously helpful introduction to Drupal programming for programmers. It does assume you know PHP, and warns you (or comforts you, depending) early on that there won't be much OOP here and there will be a lot of structured arrays. The chapters don't necessarily follow in order one to the next, and aren't explicitly linked one with another.
For programmers new to Drupal chapter one should be required reading. And while occasionally the book slips into "what's new" mode, for the most part the reader is considered a competent PHP coder but not necessarily someone fluent in Drupal programming.
The examples given throughout are mostly useful. One thing I hate about programming texts is when they show what the language/system can do with ridiculous examples. With the glaring exception of the Javascript chapter, this book does not stoop to such levels, instead giving real-world problems solved through the Drupal API.
The style of the book is nicely conversational. The overt humor is sparse, but at the same time you don't ever feel that you're sitting in a lecture hall. The authors seem quite well-versed in the material and aren't subjecting you to death-by-powerpoint-by-screenshot. They don't talk down to you, ever, guiding the reader through the API as a comrade. Even in the areas of security and best practice, when it would be easy to slip into browbeat mode, they resist, presenting facts instead of opinion and advice rather than orders.
The main problem I had with this book is that I feel there are parts missing. The book begins talking about how we'll use modern techniques, and mentions Drush, the Drupal shell, one of my favorite tools. And that's the last we'll here of it. Seriously. Even when the installation profile chapter says we can use profiles at the command line, we end up writing a command line PHP script instead of leveraging Drush. An oversight in the editing, perhaps, to mention it at all?
Also absent any real treatment is *contributing* rather than simply *developing*. A "10 minute git tutorial" appendix wouldn't have been out of line. There's no mention of how to be a good module maintainer, dealing with releases, submitting your module to drupal.org, or any such thing. While that's not necessarily within scope, such a discussion is noticeable in its absence, particularly when the community is perhaps the strongest thing about Drupal. Given the status of the authors as top-tier contributors, it's a curious omission.
There are some nitpicks, some spelling errors, wrong screenshots, and discussions of things (ie., drush) that just aren't there. No more, perhaps, than any other book of its size, and nothing that was too glaring or anything that would stop one in their tracks. We do occasionally slide away from coding standards (eg, after singing the praises of Doxygen comments earlier in the book, chapter seven contains no code comments at all), but it's nothing too big.
I was very happy to read through this book. It's well written by competent authors. It gets me excited to write some custom code of my own for Drupal 7. While there's not too much that will serve as a desk reference within the book (the authors are quick to point us to api.drupal.org, early and often), Drupal 7 Module Development is a worthy addition to the shelf and serves as a wonderful introduction to coding for Drupal.Drupal 7 Module Development OverviewThis book takes a hands-on, practical approach to software development. The authors, all professional Drupal developers and contributors to the Drupal project, provide accessible coding samples designed to exhibit not only the technical merits and abilities of Drupal, but also proper architectural and stylistic approaches to coding on one of the world's most popular content management systems. Every chapter provides fully functional code samples illustrating the APIs and strategies discussed in the chapter. With this foundation, developers can quickly build sophisticated tools on their own by making use of the strategies and techniques exemplified in this book. If you are a PHP developer or a Drupal user looking to dive into Drupal development then you will find this book an excellent introduction to coding within Drupal. Those with some Drupal experience will also find this an invaluable tool for updating their knowledge about the powerful new features of Drupal 7. Theme developers looking to extend their abilities will find this an accessible introduction to PHP coding within the Drupal environment. This book assumes that you are familiar with basic PHP programming, along with HTML and CSS. No experience with programming Drupal is required, although it is also a handy way for experienced Drupal developers to get up to speed with Drupal 7.

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Foundation Drupal 7: Learn How to Use the Drupal Framework to Quickly Build Feature-rich Websites Review

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Foundation Drupal 7: Learn How to Use the Drupal Framework to Quickly Build Feature-rich Websites ReviewI manage a Drupal development team and have stacks of Drupal Books and attend DrupalCon on a regular basis. One thing that is always true for those new to Drupal is the learning curve - it is steep. There are some things that you can do quickly and easily with little experience but soon you will hit the wall and start rummaging through the Drupal documentation site which in itself is a good tool but often is confusing for the true beginner. This process will be made more complex as Drupal 7 is new and has a number of changes from Drupal 6 so there will be a lag in seeing good tutorials and helpful hints build up in the community. That is where this book fills the gap - it can take the new Drupal user through the key components of setting up and using Drupal 7 in an understandable and accessible way. To aid this the authors have included a large number of screen shots and clear explanations so that you know clearly what to do and how to do.
For those who already have some Drupal experience this is a nice overview of Drupal 7. One thing not to miss is the 40 pages of appendices where more advanced topics are covered. I was very pleased to see a section on Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It is very unfulfilling to build a great site and then have no one find it, the SEO section gives you the basics on how to make your Drupal site findable. The other three sections - Drush, the commend line shell for Drupal; 50+ Contributed Modules to Spice Up Any SIte; and Views Recipes are all helpful and are a good follow up to the main body of the book.
I think this is a very helpful book and one which anyone new to Drupal or Drupal 7 would benefit from reading.Foundation Drupal 7: Learn How to Use the Drupal Framework to Quickly Build Feature-rich Websites OverviewThe open source Drupal Web site builder/content management system is one of the hottest open source Web development/design software out there. Foundation Drupal 7 by R.J. Townsend aims to be the first or one of the first books on Drupal 7 and continues Apress successful coverage of Drupal, including the best selling Pro Drupal and its update by John K. VanDyk. Foundation Drupal 7 is an introductory book for those who want a friendlier and easier way into learning and using Drupal.

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Pro Drupal 7 Development Review

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Pro Drupal 7 Development ReviewI've always been a huge fan of the Pro Drupal Development series of books. I referred to my battered copies of the D5 and D6 editions as my "bibles". I had the same expectations for the Drupal 7 version but after reading felt it lacking compared to the previous editions. My guess is there was a rush to push out the book before D7 was ready but by doing so the authors left out some key functionality available in Drupal 7. It felt more like a rehash of the D6 version with some D7 functionality thrown in. Below is a rundown of some of my "issues"
Entities: Every data element in Drupal is now an Entity (Nodes, taxonomy, users, comments). This was huge shift and probably could get its own chapter. Found barely a mention of this.
Database: I was glad to see some mention of the OOP aspects of the database API. One major absence was EntityFieldQuery. This is a huge D7 feature that developers will need and I don't recall seeing it mentioned.
RDF: Resource Description Framework is in core. This needs a chapter (or a book). Enough said.
Renderable Content: All content in D7 is treated similar to FAPI (form API), via a renderable array. This new feature didn't get nearly enough of the attention it deserves.
Javascript/AJAX: Missing about 2 chapters here. The ajax functionality for D7 is all new. I don't recall a mention of the Ajax commands API. Also missing was any mention of Drupal.behaviors. The Javascript examples don't follow the best practices.
I respect the authors work and gave them my $[...] bucks for the book. That being said, I'd really wait for (hopefully) the next edition of this book as it is missing too many key features of D7 for me to fully recommend. If you are already hardcore into D7 development definitely hold out.Pro Drupal 7 Development Overview
Pro Drupal 7 Development updates the most popular development reference for therelease of Drupal 7. With several new and completely-rewritten essential APIs and improvements in Drupal 7, this book will not only teach developers how to write modules ranging from simple to complex, but also how Drupal itself works.
Learn the Drupal APIs and major changes in Drupal 7
Learn how to write Drupal modules using the APIs
Learn proper development practices and how to become a contributing community member


What you'll learn

How to get started with writing basic modules
The flexible Drupal APIs and how they interact with modules
How new features in Drupal 7 make modules even more powerful and sophisticated
Best practices when developing in Drupal (coding standards, help developer modules)
How to write safe, secure, and tested code
How to contribute modules back to the Drupal community and maintain their modules using the Concurrent Versions System (CVS)

Who this book is for
This book is for existing Drupal module developers wanting to learn about Drupal 7 and people already knowledgeable in PHP who are interested in developing for Drupal. Simply put, if you are working with Drupal, then you need this book.

Table of Contents
How Drupal Works
Writing a Module
Hooks, Actions, and Triggers
The Menu System
Working with Databases
Working with Users
Working with Nodes
Working with Fields
The Theme System
Working with Blocks
The Form API
Manipulating User Input: The Filter System
Searching and Indexing Content
Working with Files
Working with Taxonomy
Caching
Sessions
Using jQuery
Localization and Translation
XML-RPC
Writing Secure Code
Development Best Practices
Optimizing Drupal
Installation Profiles
Testing
Database Table Reference
Resources


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The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 Review

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The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 ReviewThis is the most complete and up-to-date Drupal book. It is a _big_ book, and contains information on topics that most other Drupal books skip such as:
* Project management,
* Test driven development,
* Command-line administration.
I've only just started digging in to the material, but it has already helped me on my project.The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 OverviewThe Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 is the most comprehensive book for building web sites using the powerful and extensible Drupal content management framework.Written by active community members and contributors (some of the "brightest and most innovative minds in the Drupal community," to quote Angela Byron, Drupal 7 maintainer), the Definitive Guide to Drupal 7 covers the basics then quickly advances to in-depth exploration of the functionality and tools that make Drupal so powerful for building web applications. Just as important, this book provides the reader with a guide to participating in the Drupal community: an international, committed, rapidly growing community of themers, developers, and open source advocates who write the modules, test the code, and work ceaselessly to make Drupal great. The release of Drupal 7, with its dramatic improvements in usability and system architecture, will take Drupal to a new level of popularity, and this book will help give you the foundation and scaffolding to grow with Drupal.With The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7, you will be able to:
Plan and build a complete Drupal site with core alone.
Extend Drupal's functionality by selecting from thousands of modules.
Make your Drupal site look like anything you want with theming and jQuery.
Extend Drupal by coding your own modules.
Install Drupal in many environments.
Use essential tools such as Drush and Git to make your life easier.
Contribute to the Drupal community as an organizer or a coder.
Who this book is forAnyone who is serious about getting better at Drupal.Table of Contents
Building a Drupal 7Site
Essential Tools: Drush and Git
Building Dynamic Pages Using Views
There's a Module for That
Creating Community Web Sites with Organic Groups
Security in Drupal
Updating Drupal
Extending Your Site
Drupal Community:Getting Help and Getting Involved
Planning and Managing a Drupal Project
Documenting for End Users and the Production Team
Development Environment
Puttinga Site Online and Deploying New Features
Developing from a Human Mindset
Theming
Advanced Theming
jQuery
Introduction to Module Development
Using Drupal's APIs in a Module
Refining Your Module
Porting Modules to Drupal 7
Writing Project-Specific Code
Introduction to Functional Testing with Simpletest
Writing a Major Module
Drupal Commerce
Drush
Scaling Drupal
Spice Your Content Up with Tasty Semantics
The Menu System and the Path Into Drupal
Under the Hood: Inside Drupal When ItDisplays a Page
Search and Apache SolrIntegration
User Experience
Completing a Site: The Other 90%
Drupal Distributions and Installation Profiles
Drupal's Story:A Chain of Many Unexpected Events
Now You're in Business: Making a Livingwith Drupal
Maintaining a Project
Contributing to the Community
Appendix A: Updating a Drupal Site from6 to 7
Appendix B: Profiling Drupal and Optimizing Performance
Appendix C: Page Rendering and Altering
Appendix D: Visual Design in Drupal
Appendix E: Accessibility
Appendix F: Windows Development Environment
Appendix G: Installing Drupal on Ubuntu
Appendix H: Mac OS X Installation
Appendix I:Setting Up a Drupal Environment with the Acquia Dev Desktop
Authors
Benjamin Melançon
Jacine Luisi
Károly Négyesi
Greg Anderson
Bojhan Somers
Stéphane Corlosquet
Stefan Freudenberg
Michelle Lauer
Ed Carlevale
Florian Lorétan
Dani Nordin
Ryan Szrama
Susan Stewart
Jake Strawn
Brian Travis
Dan Hakimzadeh
Amye Scavarda
Albert Albala
Allie Micka
Robert Douglass
Robin Monks
Roy Scholten
Peter Wolanin
Kay VanValkenburgh
Greg Stout
Kasey Qynn Dolin
Forest Mars
Sam Boyer
Mike Gifford
Claudina Sarahe
George Cassie
Mike Ryan
Dmitri Gaskin


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