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[sander-martijn]

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. 

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. 

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.



Jean Gazis wrote:
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Jean
>
> On 8/15/07, *sander-martijn* <sander at sander-martijn.com 
> <mailto:sander at sander-martijn.com>> wrote:
>
>     Well I can give you an answer from someone who knows css html and php
>     quite well and has been doing all of them for a decade, give or take.
>     Theming in and of itself is not that difficult.  However it will
>     certainly seem so from the online documentation.  I beat my head
>     on the
>     wall yesterday for hours while reading through page after page of
>     documentation and not even understanding where to start - The
>     html, css
>     and javascript being done and a solid knowledge of php, all i had to
>     know was what I needed to add to the code, how and where and I could
>     handle the rest.  The documentation seems to be bent on the idea that
>     everyone wants to modify an existing theme (and a browse through the
>     theme repository shows that that's exactly what many do) rather than
>     implement a custom design delivered by a designer.  Furthermore
>     most of
>     it speaks in drupal.  Lastly, a lot of things are simply not
>     documented
>     or missing important details.
>
>     I finally gave up on the documentation and went to b&n and picked
>     up a
>     copy of Pro Drupal Development.  Within an hour I had a theme working
>     that somewhat resembles the site and have a good idea of what I
>     need to
>     do for the rest.  I'm now hacking through the menu structure to
>     get my
>     css dropdown menus working.
>
>     In short, it's not theming that's difficult, it's finding good
>     information on it that is.
>
>     .sander
>
>     Jean Gazis wrote:
>     > How hard is it for a non-programmer to learn just enough PHP to do
>     > theming, or is that in itself a stupid question? Compared to say,
>     > learning CSS. (I mean not learning PHP instead of CSS, but I
>     have been
>     > learning CSS so it is a reasonable benchmark.)
>     >
>     > Jean
>
>     --
>     [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Jean Gazis
> www.jeangazis.com <http://www.jeangazis.com>
> www.boxofrain.us <http://www.boxofrain.us>
>
> "Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it." - 
> André Gide 

-- 
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sander-martijn <mailto:sander at sander-martijn.com>
interface developer | architect
sander at sander-martijn.com <mailto:sander at sander-martijn.com>
www.sander-martijn.com <http://www.sander-martijn.com>

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