Planet Drupal

Preston So

April 27, 2020

Components everywhere: How JSX can inspire Twig components for Drupal's front end - part 3

Drupal is quickly approaching a critical inflection point in terms of its ability to adapt to and outperform other technologies in the web development space, particularly in the front end. Trends like decoupled Drupal, are rapidly gaining adoption in the Drupal community, but such architectural approaches do not resolve the issue of how Drupal's front end can contend with the increasing focus on popular front-end technologies like React and Vue.

Preston So

April 19, 2020

Components everywhere: How a virtual DOM could bring Drupal to a reactive front-end future - part 2

A debate has been ongoing for several years about how Drupal's front end can compete against the primacy of JavaScript frameworks that are rapidly gaining steam in the wider web development community. In this multi-part blog series, we review the most important concepts behind this potential future for Drupal's front end, including Web Components, virtual DOMs, and what Drupal can learn from other ecosystems. In this second installment in the series, we examine how Drupal's...

Preston So

April 15, 2020

Components everywhere: Is Drupal’s front-end future in Web Components? - part 1

The question of where Drupal's front end is headed has led to much handwringing in the community, with a variety of ongoing discussions about whether decoupled Drupal is the future for Drupal's presentation layer. Out of all the debates in the community, few have engendered as much consternation and spilled ink as how, when, and whether to replace or augment Twig's functionality as the default theme engine for Drupal.

Preston So

March 25, 2020

Tackling Complex Business Logic with Laravel - Tag1 Team Talk #012

In this Tag1 Team Talks episode, Laslo Horváth (Senior Laravel Developer at Tag1) joins guests Fabian Franz (Senior Technical Architect and Performance Lead at Tag1), Michael Meyers (Managing Director at Tag1), and your host Preston So (Editor in Chief at Tag1 and Senior Director, Product Strategy at Oracle) for a deep dive into why Laravel should be your choice when building a mission-critical PHP architecture that encompasses a decoupled front end in JavaScript and multi-level...

Preston So

March 18, 2020

What's ahead on Claro's roadmap and how you can get involved - part 4

Drupal has seen a range of administrative experiences over its history, starting with early Drupal mainstays like the Garland theme and Seven, perhaps the most recognizable iteration of Drupal's editorial experience in its history. Recently, another administration theme joined the pantheon of administration themes in Drupal core that have had an outsized influence on how users interact with Drupal not only for the first time but for countless times afterwards. The Claro administration theme is...

Preston So

March 17, 2020

Collaborative editing in Gutenberg: The unique challenges of implementing shared editing - part 3

One of the seemingly intractable difficulties in content management systems is the notion of supporting collaborative editing in a peer-to-peer fashion. Indeed, from an infrastructural standpoint, enabling shared editing in a context where server-side CMSs rule the day can be particularly challenging. All of this may soon change, however, with the combination of Yjs, an open-source real-time collaboration framework, and Gutenberg, the new editor for WordPress. With the potential future outlined by Yjs and collaborative...

Preston So

March 11, 2020

How Claro became more accessible and stayed innovative - part 3

Throughout Drupal's existence, no other changes have made as much an impression on users as refreshes of the administrative interface in Drupal. Content editors and site builders have a long list of expectations when it comes to the editorial experience they wish to use, and surveys and tests had shown that Seven was showing its age. Now, thanks to Claro, the new administration theme for Drupal 8, user interfaces for all editors in Drupal are...

Preston So

March 04, 2020

How Claro found inspiration in modern design patterns - part 2

Across Drupal's storied history, perhaps the most noticeable — and visible — changes in the CMS's evolution have come from the redesigns of the administrative interface that underpin every user's interaction with the Drupal editorial experience. Now, with the release of the Claro administration theme, which replaces the Seven theme and focuses on content author and site builder use cases, Drupal has reached another important inflection point in the history of its user experience. Claro...

Preston So

February 27, 2020

Insider insights on rendering and security features: What the future holds for decoupled Drupal - part 2

As another decade comes to a close in Drupal’s long and storied history, one important trend has the potential to present amazing — or unsettling, depending on how you look at it — opportunities and shifts in the Drupal ecosystem. That trend is decoupled Drupal.

Preston So

February 25, 2020

What the future holds for decoupled Drupal: Insider insights on the commercial and API landscapes (part 1)

Over the last five years, decoupled Drupal has grown from a fringe topic among front-end enthusiasts in the Drupal community to something of a phenomenon when it comes to coverage in blog posts, tutorials, conference sessions, and marketing collateral. There is now even a well-received book by this author and a yearly conference dedicated to the topic. For many Drupal developers working today, not a day goes by without some mention of decoupled architectures that...