The theme of your website has the capacity for beautiful, semantic markup...and also the hacky HTML soup. You can build a new theme by downloading a free theme and tearing out its guts--or you can learn how to become a theme surgeon. In this session you will learn two key techniques needed to build a successful theme: crime scene investigation (identifying Drupal page elements in your design files) and power tools for copy-cat theming (things you need to recreate your design using Drupal). From start to finish we will transform a design file into a Drupal theme. With special attention given to your all-important questions: how do I save time with grid-based design? Should I use Panels? How do I make this bit of stuff appear next to that bit? Yah, but how do I start? [This presentation was given at DrupalCon Chicago but the recording failed. Slides are available from http://www.slideshare.net/emmajane/forensic-theming-for-drupal] About The Presenter Emma Jane Hogbin is well known in the Drupal community for her engaging presentations and kickass theming book, Front End Drupal. She is currently working on her second book, Drupal: A user's guide which is due out shortly after DrupalCon. Through her training company, Design to Theme, emmajane has empowered thousands of people to create the Drupal site of their dreams. Intended audience Small business site builders who partner with graphic designers but have no idea how to make Drupal look like a design file. Intermediate themers who start with a free Drupal theme that looks "close" to the final site and then start hacking to make their theme. The audience currently does not use base themes and are frustrated at how complicated all of the code is. They are looking for shortcuts and some quick-fix solutions to make theming faster and more profitable. Questions answered by this session What are the key tools I need to use to make themeing Drupal easier? How can I make Drupal markup less yucky? Where should I start when building a new theme? Yeah, but how do I theme *that thing*? I want to see how you build a theme: show me! Presented at: http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/sessions/forensic-theming-key-techniques-building-effective-drupal-themes

1. Design, UX and Theming
Forensic Theming
Emma Jane Hogbin
@emmajanedotnet
www.designtotheme.com

2. drupal.org participation
● emmajane
● uid: 1773
● First look at the Drupal code base: 2003ish.
I stole the i18n table structure.
● First Drupal site “for pay”: 2006ish.
● First Drupal socks: 2007.
● First DrupalCon conference: Szeged in 2008.
● First Drupal book: 2009.
● First Drupal core patch: 2010.
Removed the “welcome” screen.

3. Really Tiny Web Budgets

4. The Socks
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mortendk/1439332466/

5. www.emmajane.net/craft/drupal

6. Book (Co)Author

7. Workbook Author
www.designtotheme.com
Discount Code: DCLON87488
Valid to the end of August.

8. Drupal Trainer
www.sitebuildingextravaganza.com

9. Lazy Front End Developer

10. I'll just change this one tpl.php file
http://www.flickr.com/photos/gibbons/2500423526

11. Okay ... and a module file?

12. and ...

13. ... everything else too? Bugger.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/amagill/3225245292

14. This presentation is not about ...
● Best practices ● Inheritance
● Anything advanced ● HTML5
● Design ● Photoshop
● Semantic markup ● Web systems
● Responsive Web design
● Theming APIs
● Typography
● Mobile devices
● Grids (maybe a little
bit) ● Unicorns
● CSS optimization ● Sprites
● CSS preprocessing ● In-the-browser design
● Rick Astley ● Sliding doors
● PHP
● Gradients
● Hooks
● IE6

15. Advanced Theming Sessions
Display Suite
Tuesday 17:00 - NodeOne Road - Fairfield Room
http://tinyurl.com/dclondon-displaysuite
Theming API
Tuesday 15:45 - NodeOne Road - Fairfield Room
http://tinyurl.com/dclondon-themingapi
Responsive Design
Thursday 11am - Axis 12 Street - Arnhem Gallery
http://tinyurl.com/dclondon-responsivedesign

16. Forensic Theming
Best
Practices
Dissecting
Themes

17. Agenda
Tools for Forensic Theming Theming Tools
Sketchbooks CSS Frameworks
Sweaver
●
● ●
Wireframes ● Base themes
Firebug
●
●
●
Data models ● Layout modules
● Devel Themer ● Grid frameworks ● Text editors
Theme Building Summary
● Base themes ● Questions/Answers
● Image extraction ● Bonuses
● MVTs
● Forensic styling

18. The Crime

19. Crime Scene

20. Forensic Theming
Definition: the art of
investigating a
Drupal page to find
out how that thing
got there.

21. Two Types of Clues
Crime Scene Investigation
Working with the rendered page:
● Available CSS selectors.
● Applied CSS styles.
Crime Lab Forensics
Working with Drupal code files:
● Theme templates
● Module templates
● Hard coded module nonsense

22. Crime Scene
Working with rendered
pages. You can only look
at the effects of Drupal
on a rendered page.

23. Identifying CSS Selectors
With Sweaver
● Common newbie problem: being able to find
relevant CSS selectors.
● Sweaver can be used as a pointy-clicky-non-scary
CSS class selector.
● Can save/publish minor changes to CSS to live
Web sites.
● http://drupal.org/project/sweaver

24. Sweaver User Interface

25. Click on Stuff

26. See How a Selector Will Be Applied
Change CSS properties
See the changes
CSS selector to use in your theme

27. Risky Live Demo
http://d7.sandbox/sweaver

28. Identifying What's Applied
With Firebug
●
Common newbie problem: trying to identifying
what CSS styles are being applied by staring at
code.
● Firebug can be used to identify what CSS is
actually being applied to a rendered Web page.
● www.getfirebug.com

29. Locate Properties of Page Elements
Relevant HTML Page element CSS styles
source

30. Risky Live Firebug Demo
●
http://d7.sandbox/sbe-site3/
● Inspect element.
● Edit CSS properties.
● Edit CSS files.
● Cannot publish changes.
● www.getfirebug.com

31. Other Useful Browser Tools
●
Web Developer Toolbar
http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/
● IE Web Developer Toolbar
http://tinyurl.com/ie-web-dev-toolbar

32. Forensics

33. Devel / Themer
● The Cadillac of theming tools.
●
Tells you which tpl.php or theme function is
responsible for that thing displaying over there.
● http://drupal.org/project/devel_themer
● http://drupal.org/project/devel

34. Point, Click, Analyse
3. Analyse the list of
functions, templates,
2. Click on the thing variables, etc which
1. Enable Themer Info you want to control this page element.
investigate

35. Investigate What Themer Reveals
Also go to: http://api.drupal.org

36. Ooops.

37. No risky live demo.

38. Making It Easier

39. node.tpl.php
field.tpl.php
jplayer.tpl.php
page.tpl.php

40. content

41. I want less yucky markup!
Pink sherbert photography http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3372060864/

43. Less Yucky Markup
●
European vs American theming
● Inheritance: start with a better base.
● Base theme: mothership
● Modules: Semantic Views
● D6 Modules: Semantic CCK
● HTML5 http://drupal.org/project/html5_tools

44. Theming Tools

45. Sketchbook

46. Wire Frames
www.balsamiq.com

47. Data Model
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alan-dean/3513723498

48. Grid Framework
http://960.gs/

49. Want to Learn Grids?
Harass @markboulton and tell him to finish his book.
http://www.fivesimplesteps.com/
Do it.
Right now.
Tweet him.
And tell him if he doesn't finish his book you're going
to build exclusively 16-column, grid-based Web sites
until his book his published.

50. CSS (Grid) Framework

51. Base Theme
● drupal.org/project/ninesixty
● drupal.org/project/fusion
● drupal.org/project/zen

52. Drupal (Layout) Modules
●
Context http://drupal.org/project/context
● Display Suite http://drupal.org/project/ds
● Panels http://drupal.org/project/panels

53. Text Editor
Use anything that doesn't make you
want to punch someone in the face.

54. Build me a theme!

55. Steps to Making a Theme
1. Communicate with your whole team.
2. Plan your data structure.
3. Use wire frames to prove what you're saying about how the
site ought to be built.
4.Build the site (ignore the theme).
5. Convert your wire frame to a grid layout.
6.Build out the HTML fragments in the relevant tpl.php files.
7. Apply your theme to the site.
8.Refine as necessary based on the UX.

56. Domicile
●
Designed by Betty Biesenthal.
● Themed by Emma Jane Hogbin.
● Available from http://drupal.org/project/domicile
● Described in Drupal: a user's guide

60. Theme Folder
sites/example.com/themes/theme_name
theme_name.info
page.tpl.php
Also: sites/all/themes/base_theme

61. theme_name.info (1 of 2)
name = D7SBE - Domicile
description = A three-column design by Design House (www.design-house.ca) and themed by
Design to Theme.
screenshot = screenshot.png
core = 7.x
engine = phptemplate
base theme = ninesixty
; Stylesheets.
stylesheets[all][] = styles.css
; To show the 960.gs grid and debug your theme's layout, delete this section.
; You will be able to remove this when http://drupal.org/node/1032486 is rolled out
stylesheets[all][] = debug.css

62. theme_name.info (2 of 2)
; Regions
regions[nav_left] = Navigation (left)
regions[feature_middle] = Feature column (middle)
regions[content] = Content column (right)
regions[copyright_footer] = Copyright notice (footer)
; Features
features[] = logo
features[] = name
features[] = favicon

63. page.tpl.php

69. Hard Code Relevant Images

70. Minimum Viable Theme

71. Locate Properties of Page Elements
Relevant HTML Page element CSS styles
source

72. styles.css

73. Domicile: the theme

74. Summary
● Plan. Think. Build. Test. Theme. Iterate.
● Use relevant Drupal modules to break up content and display it
in relevant locations.
● Use Sweaver to isolate selectors for your CSS files.
● Use Firebug to diagnose and fix CSS problems.
● Use Devel to isolate theme functions and variables.
● Correlate the number of tpl and PHP files you edit to the size of
your budget and amount of time you have.

75. The practical guide to building sites with Drupal.
Pre-order eBook edition on
and SAVE 45%!
Use Coupon Code
IUGD45
at Step 3 of Checkout
Available September 2011

76. Theming Birds of a Feather Sessions
●
Advanced Theming
Time slot: 24 August 13:45 – 14:45
Room 333 Part 1
●
Front End Development
Time slot: 25 August 13:30 – 14:30
Room 333 Part 2
●
Theming in Drupal 8
Time slot: 25 August 14:45 – 15:45
Room 333 Part 2

77. What did you think?
Locate this session on the DrupalCon London website:
http://london2011.drupal.org/conference/schedule
Click the “Take the survey” link
Discounts'n'stuff BoFs
45% off Drupal User Guide Advanced Theming
www.informit.com Code: IUGD45 Time slot: 24 August 13:45 – 14:45
Room 333 Part 1
45% off Design to Theme workbooks
www.designtotheme.com Code: DCLON87488 Front End Development
Time slot: 25 August 13:30 – 14:30
www.sitebuildingextravaganza.com Room 333 Part 2
@emmajanedotnet Theming in Drupal 8
emma@designtotheme.com Time slot: 25 August 14:45 – 15:45
Room 333 Part 2