[drupal-docs] Drupal Newsletter #2 -DRAFT-

[Steven Wittens]

A very interesting read... good work everyone.

Suggestions:

>OSCON Portland August 1-5, 2005
>  OSCON (http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2005/) will be in
>Portland, Oregon, USA 1-5 August 2005.  Topics include:
>    * Drupal Developers
>    * Drupal Users
>    * CivicSpace
>    * Usability BOF
>    * DrupalEd BOF
>    * Drupal.org infrastructure
>
>  
>
This doesn't say much at all. Perhaps you could add something like "We 
are using this as an opportunity to bring together anyone interested in 
Drupal who is in the area or already coming to OSCON." I also think you 
should expand the acronym "OSCON" at least once in the text so people 
know what it's about. The URL is semi-explanatory, but it never hurts to 
be precise.

Oh and I'd replace BOF with "Birds of a Feather meeting" or something 
similarly descriptive. BOF sounds like a disease (well it is, in Dutch :P).

>CUSTOM CONTENT TYPES
>  Need more flexibility in creating content?  Are the simple page and
>story content types not enough for your site's needs?  Do you want you
>could create content on the fly by just filling in a few fields?
>  
>
"Do you want you could" -> "Do you wish you could..."

Also, it's not so much about creating new content, but creating new 
content /types/. The part that comes after this does contain a better 
description, but it should be clear from the start what it's about IMO.

>  Once you setup all the fields, you can easily add content by
>selecting the new content type from the create content menu.
>  
>
"setup" -> "set up"

>WYSIWIG EDITORS
>  Writing colourful content in Drupal is sometimes a hassle.  You
>either write the page in a separate WYSIWIG editor and copy it into
>Drupal or code HTML in the tiny textarea.
>  
>
Using WYSIWIG editors for "colourful" content is IMO the most evil thing 
you can do with them. It is the same reason HTML mail is associated with 
mauve 40pt Comic Sans MS text peppered with smileys and other assorted 
animated GIFs. I think the focus should be moved towards structure 
rather than looks. Perhaps we can replace "colourful" with "rich" (as 
used later in the text) and replace the later instance of "rich" with 
"diverse" or "marked up".

>    Steven removed ][ from form item id's. http://drupal.org/node/23516
>...
>    Steven fixed the "undefined is undefined" error in IE5 with
>drupal.js . (We just love Microsoft error messages -- ed.).
>http://drupal.org/node/24068
>  
>
I only committed these... Thox was the one who created the patches so he 
should be credited.

>  Adrianrf tells us of Potter's campaign was run with Drupal and the
>Dean for America project.  Over 65% of funding came from PR Drupal
>sites.  Way to go!
>  Full story: http://drupal.org/node/24033#comment-43279
>  
>
His full name seems to be Adrian Russell-Falla, but his site is down at 
the moment. "Adrianrf" looks like a typo ;).

>Change your subscription settings: http://drupal.org/newsletter
>  
>
This sounds like a command or request and feels a bit convoluted. "If 
you no longer wish to receive the Drupal newsletter:" is probably 
better, no?

Also, sometimes you have a space between a closing bracket and an URL, 
and sometimes you don't. Thunderbird doesn't seem to have a problem with 
no space, but I'm not sure about other clients. Perhaps you should use 
<> instead of (), they are commonly used for this and I think email 
clients will handle them better (but you should probably do some tests 
to be sure).


<nag>
On a personal note, I am a bit disappointed that all the credit for the 
Ajax stuff seems to go to David implicitly. I admit I care particularly 
about this because it is a hot feature and I spent quite some time 
coding on it myself. But a lot of the ideas in that patch were based on 
Code Sprint usability discussions, where a general plan for Javascript 
functionality was created. Several people (Dries, Bèr, Tim, Moshe, ...) 
helped test and review the patch. The folksonomy autocomplete feature 
was proposed by Gerhard.

Don't get me wrong, David has done a great job with his consistently 
high quality contributions, and I have no problem with putting a 
spotlight on him to thank him for that. Plus, his interview was a very 
interesting read, full of great compliments about Drupal. But the 
ajax/autocomplete functionality was the result of a bunch of people's 
ideas and effort. Focusing on one person seems to miss the point about 
Drupal being a community. It also misses an opportunity to point out to 
our users how events like the Code Sprint can have a long-lasting 
benefit for everyone.
</nag>

Steven Wittens