Themer Pain Points

• Lack of mockups = no big picture planning
• Lack of time = sloppy CSS
• Crazy selectors = less reusable code
• After completion = not much flexibility, low shelf life

You're doing it wrong if...

• You're not styling default Drupal elements
• You're excessively targeting IDs
• You're writing super specific CSS
• You're creating a new .tpl file for each little change
• You're not structuring markup in a way that is flexible

Skinr lets you

• Create your own reusable style definitions in the theme layer
• Lets you creat your own CSS classes and forget about drupal
• Makes your styles point-and-click

Where it shines:

• Contrib themes

Flexinode was available from 2004-2007, versions 4.4-4.7. It introduced the idea of custom content types. Problem: it didn't work at all in Views. Was rewritten to scale better. CCK, the successor, lived from 2007-2010, in versions 4.7 to 6.x.

Early on, it was table-segregated by type of data: text, integer, etc. Didn't last long. Now: if the same field exists in multiple content types, it all goes in the same table.

Notes:  http://dave-cohen.com/

Facebook Application Development Platform

Facebook has done some basic verification on the users, with email addresses or CAPTCHA, so you're somewhat more assured of reaching real people. Obviously, you can tap into these users' social networks.

Dev platform was created in 2007. Allows anyone to add features to facebook.com. Early apps were aggressively viral; this has calmed down recently. Today it supports

Collection of tools. Intended to be zero-dependency. One step above core, in Earl's view.

Code from this session is at http://drupal.org/Project/jQ4DaT
Slides are at http://tinyurl.com/jQuery-Designers - fingers crossed I'm typing all of this right.

I am having to be far more careful at drupalcon than I'd hoped. Instead of doing a full-blown free-for-all, I'm having to be choosy about what I do -- and I'm choosing to go to sessions. I came down with something nasty either in Huntsville or in Minnesota, and it was in full swing by the time I landed in San Francisco. What had originally been just an angry tickle in the back of my throat was so bad I couldn't swallow solids or liquids without pain.