Drupal 7

I was listening to a podcast by AbilityNet in the UK the other day and liked what they were doing so I sent them a note on Twitter suggesting that their community might find the developments in Drupal interesting.  I got into a conversation with them and ended up producing an MP3 with the following introduction to Drupal 7.  After Drupal 7 is released we'll have to do a piece highlighting all the pieces that got in, but for now this is a good introduction.

One of the more interesting DrupalCon DC sessions from my perspective was one describing the in-progress core Fields module. It is heavily based on CCK and will replace CCK in Drupal 7. The development is ongoing and has benefited from a number of recent code sprints.

I'm excited about this module for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it will allow fields to be added to any object- not just nodes. This includes Users, Nodes, Comments, data pulled from outside sources - whatever. Needless to say this is going to be very useful, potentially replacing modules like Profile with core functionality.

This is done through some carefully thought-out APIs that will once again change how custom field types are created, though hopefully for the better. According to the presentation (found below) it's a return to the data level/GUI level pattern found in D5 but departed from in D6. Probably the very best part, however, is that the API documentation will be included in core and will thus be accessible.

I've been trying to lead the charge on accessibility issues with Drupal 7 leading up to DrupalCon DC.  As Dries outlined in his keynote, we've got until Sept 1, 2009 before the feature freeze takes place, so time's precious.  Also, as Angie Byron noted, there are some accessibility issues that have been identified but not resolved for years.  So, now that WCAG 2.0 is out and there seems to be a renewed interest in accessibility I was quite happy to see the interest in participants at the conference.

Between the two Bird of a Feather (geeky breakout group) workshops that were organized on accessibility issues we had nearly 40 people participate.  Accessibility was discussed in other contexts too as it was something that many people are concerned with, especially when reconsidering core themes and usability.  The discussions had a representative from DAISY, as well as several other accessibility experts.  Individuals participated in the sessions because they believed in the issue, understood the requirements for it and also because they ultimately saw it as being profitable to the organizations and businesses that they represented. 

For a list of Accessibility issues for Drupal 7.

Wanted to make a brief announcement about a small patch that OpenConcept contributed to Drupal 7 to enhance accessibility.  Drupal's accessibility is quite good, but there are always ways to improve for any software.  In this case someone reported a problem with radio buttons where the <LABEL> tag was not being associated properly with the appropriate form elements. 

I looked at this problem, and rolled a patch for it (which included checkboxes as well) and then attached it to the project.  As was discussed at the March 2008 DrupalCon, unit testing is being implemented to review patches to core before they get accepted.  After re-implementing the patch in a new format it passed and it has been since approved by webchick who is also "Marking back to 6.x for consideration".