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Well yes - much of the book is for advanced development and chapter 2
delves right into module development. But chapter one gives a good
overview of the system and chapter 8 deals with themes in an incredibly
straight forward way. I wish they spent more time on theme development
than they do or that there was a book devoted to that level of
development but the book was worth the money for me for that chapter
alone because it starts out with "take your html page, add in these few
bits of php code just like this and bam it works" before going into
things in a bit more detail. Also seems to handle working with blocks
in a pretty good way but i haven't dealt much with that yet. <br>
<br>
For myself I'll also be happy to have it when i get to the inevitable
developing of my own module - I need something that will find the
closest representative to a zipcode and i'm pretty sure no one has
built that yet. There are open source databases available to deal with
it but i'll have to build the glue. probably something others will
find useful when i'm done too. <br>
<br>
but yes - although a lot of the book will probably go over your head
for now from what you've said about your skill level, it's probably
worth the money spent just to get you going with theme development, and
the block work you'll likely have to do once your themes start
advancing. I'm quite certain I would have been able to get my theme
going with this book even without php knowledge. <br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
Jean Gazis wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid90f7ebd10708151453v26e1cceo448380ef44b830e@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">Maybe I will get that book, then. Everyone recommends it,
but I had the impression that it was only for people who want to really
develop stuff, like actual modules. <br>
<br>
And I have to say, having read just a couple of tech how-to books, I
don't know how people can stand it - good writers seem to be in very
short supply in the tech handbook genre.
<br>
<br>
Jean<br>
<br>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/15/07, <b
class="gmail_sendername">sander-martijn</b> <<a
href="mailto:sander@sander-martijn.com">sander@sander-martijn.com</a>>
wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">Well
I can give you an answer from someone who knows css html and php<br>
quite well and has been doing all of them for a decade, give or take.<br>
Theming in and of itself is not that difficult. However it will<br>
certainly seem so from the online documentation. I beat my head on the
<br>
wall yesterday for hours while reading through page after page of<br>
documentation and not even understanding where to start - The html, css<br>
and javascript being done and a solid knowledge of php, all i had to<br>
know was what I needed to add to the code, how and where and I could
<br>
handle the rest. The documentation seems to be bent on the idea that<br>
everyone wants to modify an existing theme (and a browse through the<br>
theme repository shows that that's exactly what many do) rather than
<br>
implement a custom design delivered by a designer. Furthermore most of<br>
it speaks in drupal. Lastly, a lot of things are simply not documented<br>
or missing important details.<br>
<br>
I finally gave up on the documentation and went to b&n and picked
up a
<br>
copy of Pro Drupal Development. Within an hour I had a theme working<br>
that somewhat resembles the site and have a good idea of what I need to<br>
do for the rest. I'm now hacking through the menu structure to get my
<br>
css dropdown menus working.<br>
<br>
In short, it's not theming that's difficult, it's finding good<br>
information on it that is.<br>
<br>
.sander<br>
<br>
Jean Gazis wrote:<br>
> How hard is it for a non-programmer to learn just enough PHP to do
<br>
> theming, or is that in itself a stupid question? Compared to say,<br>
> learning CSS. (I mean not learning PHP instead of CSS, but I have
been<br>
> learning CSS so it is a reasonable benchmark.)<br>
><br>
> Jean
<br>
<br>
--<br>
[ Drupal support list | <a href="http://lists.drupal.org/">http://lists.drupal.org/</a>
]<br>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br>
<br clear="all">
<br>
-- <br>
Jean Gazis<br>
<a href="http://www.jeangazis.com">www.jeangazis.com
</a><br>
<a href="http://www.boxofrain.us">www.boxofrain.us</a><br>
<br>
"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." -
André Gide
</blockquote>
<br>
<div class="moz-signature">-- <br>
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<p
style="text-align: center; font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: 10px; text-transform: lowercase; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal;"><a
href="mailto:sander@sander-martijn.com"
style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 255); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">sander-martijn</a><br>
interface developer | architect<br>
<a href="mailto:sander@sander-martijn.com"
style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 255); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">sander@sander-martijn.com</a><br>
<a href="http://www.sander-martijn.com"
style="text-decoration: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 255); font-family: verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">www.sander-martijn.com</a>
</p>
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