Michael Schmid discussed his experience with Drupal 8, highlighting improvements in internationalization, accessibility, content management, and site building. Boris Baldinger commented that Drupal 8 allows for building sites out of the box but sometimes requires thinking differently, and bugs can cause issues. Alex Tkachev praised Drupal 8's use of modern technologies like Symfony, calling it "the right way" to code. Kathryn McClintock found Twig templates easier than Drupal 7 templates. The discussion ended with notes on Drupal 8's status, upcoming releases, and when it's appropriate to start using it.

2. Michael Schmid
@Schnitzel

3. We <3 Drupal 8
• Released 3 Sites on Drupal 8
• amazeelabs.com
• Drupal 8 Alpha 6
• drupal.com
• Client site
• Business Version of drupal.org
• sgg-ssup.ch
• Client site

4. Drupal 8
• almost all Code new
• SiteBuilders and Users: Only improvements

5. Content Management

6. New content form

7. Internationalization
• Drupal 7
• 29 Modules for full translatability
• Drupal 8
• 4 Modules for full translatability
• and they are all in Core!

8. Internationalization

9. Accessibility

10. Tours

11. Content Management
• New content form + preview
• Wysiwyg
• In-place editing
• Multilingual & Accessible at its core
• Tours for contextual help

12. Site Building

13. Views in Core

14. Everything is an entity
• Fieldable
• Same APIs
• Better integration into Contrib
• Config vs Content Entities

15. Fields in Core

16. Responsive

17. Form Display UI

18. View Modes in Core

19. View Modes in Core

20. Blocks Supercharged

21. RESTful

22. Site Building
• Views in Core
• Fields in core: Date, Link, Email, Telephone, Entity Reference,
• 100% responsive, mobile-first (includes admin backend)
• Form Display UI (like display modes)
• Blocks, supercharged
• Configuration management
• RESTful at the core

23. Drupal 8 in terms of sitebuilding is awesome. After a
short time you are able to build almost everything out
of the box. Sometimes you have to think around the
corner to get your result. And sometimes you get
stuck because of some nasty bugs.
Boris Baldinger
Sitebuilder

24. Developers

25. OOP / Symfony

26. .
• What does D7 hook_menu really do?
• routes
• default menu items
• local actions
• local tasks

27. Define Route

28. Page Controller

29. Forms?

30. Forms?

31. Configuration Management
• Fully in Core
• exportable
• importable
• Show differences
• New Workflows

32. Configuration Management
• variable_{get,set} are gone!

33. Entity API

34. Config Entites similar to
Content Entites

35. Proudly invented elsewhere
• Symfony2
• Assetic
• Composer
• Doctrine
• EasyRDF
• Twig
• Backbone
• jQuery
• jQuery UI
• YAML
• HAL/REST
• Guzzle
• PHPUnit
• CKEditor

36. Plugins
• Example: Blocks
• Drupal 7
• hook_block_info()
• hook_block_view()
• $delta and more...

37. Plugins
• D8

38. Migrate in Core
• update.php
• D6 support!
• D7 support!
• Contrib defines their own Migrate workflows

39. Developers
• OOP architecture / Symfony-based
• New routing system (hook_menu == gone)
• Configuration management
• Entity API
• Proudly invented elsewhere
• Migrate in Core

40. Overall, I have really really good feelings about D8.
Previously we said "Drupal way" about many coding
things. Now it's the "right way"! Drupal core now uses
bleeding edge technologies, and that makes work
really interesting.
Alex Tkachev
Backend Developer

41. Frontend

42. TWIG
• Template Engine build for Frontend Developers

43. Drupal 7
• .....

45. Drupal 8 Core
• Slimed down, no classes!

46. Drupal 8 Classy!
• All classes in templates files

47. TWIG
• Heavy lifting already done

48. CSS & JS
• drupal_add_js/css() removed
• No JS loaded by default!
• Speeeeeed
• Declare libraries
• Attach libraries

49. Declare library

50. Declare library

51. HTML5
• HTML5 out of the box

52. Responsive
• Responsive core themes
• Responsive admin theme
• Picture element

53. More libraries
• jQuery UI Touch Punch
• Backbone, Underscore
• modernizr
• domReady
• html5shiv & classList

54. Frontend
• Twig
• CSS & JSS
• HTML5
• Responsive
• More Libraries

55. In my experience with Drupal 8 (and on this project in
particular), working with Twig templates is much more
concise and straightforward to code than a D7 .tpl
file. As a developer with only basic PHP skills, the
Twig syntax is easier to grasp.
Kathryn McClintock
Frontend Developer

56. Drupal 8
• It's awesome
• It's not done yet

57. Next Steps
• 6 Critical Upgrade Blockers
• Upgradable Betas
• Head2Head!!
• Single scripts for each new Head Version
• https://www.drupal.org/project/head2head
• Beta2Beta
• Group of Scripts

58. Next Steps
• 42 Critical Bugs
• Release Candidate 1
• New Critical Bugs?
• Release Candidate 2
• New Critical Bugs?
• Release Candidate 3
• ...
• Drupal 8.0.0

59. Should I use it?
• YES
• + if you can debug code
• + you will need Head2Head for upgrading
(or wait till Betas are upgradable)

60. Future
• Drupal 8.0.0
• Drupal 8.0.1, 8.0.2, ...
• Patches, no new features
• Drupal 8.1.0, 8.2.0
• New features
• Backwards compatible!
• Drupal 9.0.0
• No Backwards compatibility anymore