On 8/18/06, Khalid B <kb@2bits.com> wrote:
The block regions feature was touted as a much needed improvement, and after many years, finally made it into Drupal 4.7. That said, I haven't seen that many people take advantage of it. This can mean (at least) three things:
I use the 4.7 region feature extensively.
Before I converted my sites to 4.7, I used several methods to display adsense blocks. These ranged from the flexiblock module, to calling block_block('view', $delta) directly.
When I converted my sites to 4.7, I junked all that in favor of regions.
I even went further and had one "announcment" block at the top center of the page, also using regions.
One problem I ran into, is that all blocks now inherit the styles of side bar blocks, and I had to work around that with some quick hacks.
Well, that is absolutely theme dependent. If you do styles that look like .region .block, then all will be different. block.tpl.php still ends up being a giant switch statement for truly unique blocks (not just CSS skinning). I agree with what Nedjo is saying, that normalization could help. I did
not run into that issue myself, because most of my sites are one theme type of sites, however, I realize it can be a drag editing tons of themes.
There are some logic flow problems that make it hard(er). You edit/add blocks "in" one theme, then hit save...and find yourself at the "first" theme, even if that is not the default. I'd love to see this approached from the point of view of themers. I do think e.g. panels module is more what themers were hoping for: an easy way to store chunks of content (nodes, blocks) and then a way to select where to place them in a layout (panels). There are a few themes that use regions to good affect. I think it's the Internet (?) theme that has four columns -- one left, one main, two right. -- Boris Mann Vancouver 778-896-2747 San Francisco 415-367-3595 Skype borismann http://www.bryght.com