I just grabbed the latest CVS build of Drupal 5, to poke around and see what’s new. I’m really surprised and impressed at how far it’s come. Here are the big changes I’ve seen in about half an hour of playing with a new test site:
New theme. Garland feels much more modern than Bluemarine. Nicely done.
Revamped admin interface. It’s been reorganized by task and by module, making it easier to find where to modify a given setting. Much of the time spent administering a Drupal 4.7 site is wasted poking around the admin screens to find where a bit needs to be twiddled. “Is it in admin > content > content types? Or rather admin > settings > content types ? etc…” The new “Content Management,” “Site Building,” “Site Configuration,” “Logs,” and “Help” admin sections should make it much simpler to run a Drupal site.
Tweaked page cache settings - not sure if the rumoured filesystem cache system is included here (is that the “aggressive - experts only” cache?)
Includes a lite version of Content Construction Kit, making it easy to create simple content types (title + description/body). Why is that cool? Because you can assign different taxonomies and access controls to the various simple content types, so different users are able to create different types of content, classified differently. I’ll have to see what the potential issues may be with running the full CCK module for managing complex content types. Our new, soon-to-be-released TLC website makes extensive, obsessive use of several complex custom content types, so I’ll be spending some time checking this out.
Separate “main” and admin themes. Instead of trying to shoehorn admin functions into a production custom theme, you can pimp out your site’s theme while retaining a fully functional admin theme. Yay.
Lots of little improvements, making the admin interface more task-oriented. Things like the Clean URL setting have been moved into more appropriate spots, rather than dumping them all into One Giant Config Screen.
Support for multiple image libraries. It was there in previous versions, but required adding a secret file to support Magick. I’ll have to install ImageMagick on my PowerBook again to try this out.
Site installer. You still have to manually create the database, but Drupal will now install the tables and a default set of data automatically. I’ll have to play with the profiles feature to see how that might tie into the Provisionator.
I’m looking forward to the release of Drupal 5. I’ve got a LOT of compatibility testing to do before going live with it, though. I’ve got several sites running older versions of some modules, because the module versioning system is confusing enough that they break a little if updating them to “current” versions. That’s one area I’d really like to see get some loving. Tagging a module as “4.7” and then making changes to it that break things depending on exactly which version of the 4.7 module you’re running (or have run). Very confusing and frustrating.
After some really spectacular fall days, winter’s here. Right on schedule, just before Halloween.
Here’s the webcam view from ShawTV, looking north from near the Stampede Grounds. That’s downtown Calgary. Hiding beneath the snow and ice piled up on the camera.
I’ve been trying to move domain registration and DNS hosting for darcynorman.net from GoDaddy to Dreamhost for a couple of months. It’s been a long and frustrating process, involving faxing my driver’s license to Arizona to somehow prove I am who I say I am.
I just logged into my Dreamhost account to check on the status (still hasn’t finalized - they sure did set it up in a hurry, but it takes a looooong time to switch off of GoDaddy). On a lark, I tried adding registration for darcynorman.com. But Dreamhost’s registration utility complained that the domain was already taken.
Alan wrote up a post on “linktribution” (the concept of providing attribution for a link to a web page, flickr image, etc…) and in the comments, Scott replied that (perhaps a more broad concept such as) Creative Commons would be a better Big Picture meme to propagate.
Which got me thinking about my experience with CC. I’m a firm believer in it. All of my stuff is licensed using a simple CC-Attribution license. Anyone is free to use any of my blog posts, any of my Flickr photos, however they wish. As long as they provide attribution to say that I created it. My photos don’t even have a non-commercial clause, and as a result they’ve been included in a board game, books, travel guides, and (soon) the cover of a magazine. Sure, I’m not getting paid for any of that, but it’s not like I’m losing out by contributing to the pool. Karma’s a good thing, and if I want to use items in the CC pool, it’s only fair that I contribute what I can.
I tried a couple of times this morning to join a webcast offered by Apple, on the topic of using Lectopia to capture and distribute lectures (and other material). Something that would be useful, say, at a large-ish university that spends a fair amount of time and effort on online and blended learning.
Instead of being able to attend the webcast, I got occasional snippets of audio, and about once every minute or so I get a partial screen refresh for the video feed of the webcast.
Like just about everyone else with an active TCP/IP stack, I grabbed a copy of Firefox 2.0 today. It feels much cleaner and faster than before, and the spelchecker is definitely welcome (making it feel more like a MacOSX browser, where all other browsers have had spelcheking for ages…)
I’ve been jonesing for a zoom lens since I picked up my Canon XT back in June. The kit lens is not too bad (aside from some chromatic aberration), but a longer lens would be great. I had been eyeing the Canon 55-200 EF lens, at around $300 bucks at the local Black’s, but after reading some reviews, I want to stay far far away from that lens and its questionable build quality.
I’ve been using Aperture for a couple of weeks, in somewhat light usage (some days not at all, others, like today, with it open for most of the day). I’ve got a few gigs of images in my Aperture library, without importing my iPhoto images (I decided it’s not worth having an out-of-sync snapshot of my iPhoto library in Aperture). Here’s some quick thoughts based on my time in Aperture 1.5:
People are learning in the same way that we always have - mostly from each other, but in some cases we learn in formalized learning institutions. The elements that make for sound instruction, whether formal learning with a teacher teaching a math class to grade nines or informal learning with an apprentice welder learning the trade from a journeyman, have not changed. Indeed they cannot change since they are so deeply dependent on the way our brains work.
With more room to spread the sessions out, and in a more flexible, amazing new learning space, this is going to be one helluvan unconference. Here’s hoping they dial back the femmie quotient on the conference T-shirt this year, though…
Sami beat me to the punch, but it’s worth publicly repeating. Garth Turner, MP for the Halton Constituency in Milton, Ontario, was booted out of the Conservative Party yesterday. For blogging. An elected member of parliament was Dooced.
Here’s the comment I posted on Sami’s blog, but I want to repeat it here as well (in case someone like the MP for my riding happens to see it):
It’s strange. This is our Government, and they boot someone out for documenting meetings and voicing honest opinions. Isn’t that what we do every day? Isn’t that what we should expect, even demand, from our representatives? The MPs represent US, not Harper. They have (IMO) an obligation to be honest (and open, and public) participants, not party mouthpieces.
