Getting up to speed on CSS tools

I did this backwards. It should have been mixins, Sass, Smacss, Compass, Singularity. Then again, sometimes starting and the end and working your way back lets you see the bigger picture and understand how it all fits together. Says the girl who started Drupal with core contributions.

Singularity (compass extension)- ratio-based grids (quick walkthrough video here), very easy to make different widths $grids: 1 2 3 2; Also can use px, pt. Integrates with breakpoint- add an @include breakpoint(30em){@include grid-span(2, 3);}. Very cool, super easy way to get responsive design out fast.

Mixins-  A mixin is an at-rule used to define a ruleset than can then be *reused* in other rulesets. Yay reusable code. I think mostly as a n00b I'm always surprised when things like this aren't a given- it makes perfect sense to be able to define a thing and then plug it in wherever you need that thing. But is this the same thing as the mixins Compass is using?

/* define a mixin */
@mixin .muffinstyle {
display: inline-block;
background-color: blue;
}
/* use a mixin */

p .bakery {
include: .muffinstyle;
border: 1px solid red;
}


ok, Stackoverflow question on the CSS at-rule here. So basically anything preceded by an @ is an instruction for the user agent, rather than styling rulesets. I've been using @media, @font-face and so on, but hadn't really thought about the construct itself. Here's MDN on at-rules and W3C on CSS syntax (this one's really helpful). There's a very handy graphic and description here on CSS statements and their subsets, at-rules and rulesets.

Compass- Ok, so there are CSS mixins, then there are Compass mixins... which are just a predefined set of CSS mixins? oh. And then Singularity pairs with Compass. I get it. /several hours of digging and reading later.

Sass- This also makes all kinds of sense. Things like variables to hold info in a more logical spot while you're writing, then output a fully fleshed out CSS file at the end. Saves on typing, mistakes, and again with the reusable code. Compass is for writing Sass. Got it. Wow, nesting. So logical, so tidy. Ah, and we're on the new version that uses curly braces, which seems a lot better than just indenting anyway. I do not generally approve of dropping semi-colons and such even if it *is* more minimalist.

Smacss- I really appreciate this- organizing, categorizing, approaching css in a logical fashion rather than throwing properties left and right and hoping it all works out. See my next post on approaching a problem, too. I might disagree with a couple things Snook says (and this book is a little old already), but his general point is spot on. I think this will fit into my brain even better after my next two or three tabs, too... Things start getting interesting once we drill down to the "module" level. Goals: increase semantics and decrease reliance on specific HTML

Next: More depth from Legacy CSS with Sass and SMACSS and modular SASS development using SMACSS and BEM.

In other predictable news, something here needed homebrew to install... I think it was a Ruby update. I have Ruby 1.8.7, but would like to have the current. Probably doesn't matter. But I think to update I need homebrew and homebrew last I checked needed xcode and 10.6.8 does not the xcode have. BUT. I think I can install the sass/singularity/compass package with just ruby. I hope. Later. Not now. Because this is always ridiculous, and generally why I'd rather stick with simple, low-level stuff.

Next: Creating a Drupal 8 Theme with Sass, Singularity & Breakpoint

Comparison of Arrays, briefly

So. Everything is an object. That was js, right? An object can be an association between a key (name) and a value. Which makes an object sort of an array, right? Because an array is a collection of key:value pairs. If key is a name, that's an object, if it's an index value, that's an array. Key:value pairs. Yep.

Examples from things I have some familiarity with:

JavaScript array creation:
var myArray = ["element1", "element2", "bunnies"];
console.log(myArray[2]);  
//prints "bunnies"

jQuery object (more than just an array):
var divs = $("div");
console.log(divs);  
//prints "[0: div.container, 1: div.logo, 2: div.content...]"

PHP:
$animals = array("dragon", "giraffe", "hedgehog");
echo $animals[2];
//displays "giraffe"

Python Lists (mutable, homogenous):
>>> colors = [['blue', 'red'], ['sage', 'vermillion']]
>>> colors[-1][0]
'sage'

And Python Dictionaries (essentially objects/associative arrays):
>>>dict = {'nonfiction': ['Pollan', 'Berners-Lee'], 'fiction': ['Tolkien', 'Asimov']}
>>> dict['nonfiction'][1]
'Berners-Lee'

And Python Tuples (immutable, heterogenous):
>>>tup = ('a', 3, -0.2)
>>>tup[1]
3

Java (fixed length):
String[] rabbits = {"fuzzy", "hoppy", "ears"};
System.out.println(rabbits[1]);
//prints "hoppy"

C (Closest to Java. Info from Learn C the Hard Way. I hadn't touched C before today, forgive me.):
main(){
char name[] = "Petunia"; 
//creates array of chars {'p', 'e', 't'...etc}
printf("name is %s.\n", name);
printf("or also %c %c %c.", name[0], name[1], name[2]);
}
//prints
name is Petunia.
or also P e t.

Becoming a Drupal Core Mentor

t's finally time to start doing something I should have done long ago: mentoring new core contributors! I've spent a small chunk of time as a mentee, setting up my own development environment (dev env), finding issues in the mentoring queue and on Drupal.org (d.o), and interacting with other core contributors. While writing documentation and doing rerolls has been a great way to learn Drupal, the real rewards have come from working with other contributors. It's been a great comfort to know that I can ask for help on IRC, and can always find a mentor online during the core mentoring office hours.

And the bonus is that teaching others is the best way (for me) to learn things! So I went to YesCT for some advice on where to start. Here are a few resources she pointed me to (in addition to this big page o' mentor resources):

First of all, the most important thing to remember for everyone in the Drupal community is that "we are all mentors." This blog post from YesCT is pretty much what I was trying to say in para #1, but she says it better. Being friendly is the best way to encourage new contributors to come back! See also: WebChick's comic about her first encounter on IRC with "the Drupal Community on a Bad Day."

Next we have a key component of being a mentor: reviewing new contributor's work. This requires knowing how to review the contributor's work, and how to review a patch itself (to check that it was done correctly). Sticking with the theme of constructive criticism, gentle reminders, helpful pointers and other supportive input here. Teaching contributors how to interact and communicate with others is a great way to keep everyone positive and engaged.

As a side project, I'd like to help update dm.o and d.o to merge issue task instructions with the regular issue queue, essentially add functionality to the d.o issue queue. Todo for me: read through these related core mentoring on d.o issues. I had just recently noted that having contributor task instructions linked on d.o as they are on dm.o would be much easier than googling them every time I start work on a new issue. Turns out there's an issue for that! (there's also a google doc I won't link to here, but, note to self...)

Then we've got resources for planning a sprint, which I'd really like to do at a Drupalcon in the near future, but am currently lacking a topic to sprint on. If anyone needs a sprint co-leader, I'm happy to help!

Part of sprinting of contributing is going to be getting everyone set up with a local environment to work with. At an event like Drupalcon, or even something on a smaller scale, this can become problematic if everyone is downloading new software etc at the same time. So here are the Drupal Community Tools Download Instructions (dctdi. Tech is almost as bad as gov't with the acronyms). We've also got an Austin specific Core Mentoring page here and of course the perennial dev env setup page here.

Phew. So far I've had a look at most of those pages, but I need to go back and read the issues for dm.o->d.o as well as go through the mentor resources links thoroughly. It's just really great to have a specific goal and project to work on! I enjoy contributing on issues, but with the current D8 beta push it's been hard to find anywhere I fit in lately. Tallyho.

Afternoon coffee (at 7 pm)

hese things always begin with the best of intentions, not to mention quite innocently. I had two objectives this afternoon (oh dear, and I see it's now 7pm. oops):
• Have a cup of coffee and plow through some documentation. And, I prefer having a small snack with my coffee, a croissant, a cookie, a slice of cake...
• Use up the heavy cream I accidentally bought to go in said coffee because I hadn't had coffee yet (the lack of a dilutionary dairy substance being the issue) and so instead of the milk I usually get I got a half litre of very thick, organic cream.

So what did I do? well I tweeted of course, asking for recipes. @HarlanH (data scientist extraordinaire) thoughtfully replied and reminded me of the existence of recipes that aren't for baked goods. Crazy, right? In retrospect, I ought to have just gone with his first thought and done a cream sauce for pasta. Instead, I followed his other recommendation to check out something called Eat Your Books.

As it turns out, Eat Your Books is a handy dandy, plug your cookbooks/magazines/blogs into it-search engine for physical collections. I faintly heard choirs of angels as I poked through the homepage: finally, I can search my cookbooks without pulling each one off the (rather precarious) shelf and flicking through the index, then a handful of recipes trying to find a use for my one stray ingredient! That method works ok for main ingredients, like zucchini, or pork chops, or even chocolate, but not for say, whole vanilla beans, cracked wheat, or, in this case, heavy cream.

I added my top cookbooks with haste. A free subscription only allows 5 resources on your e-shelf: Mastering the Art of French Cooking, The Art of French Baking, The Essentials of Baking, The Joy of Cooking and The Pie and Pastry Bible. That covers everything I usually look through, anyway. And lo, five hundred and forty four recipes appeared!

It being me, I didn't really have many other ingredients on hand apart from the standard baking arsenal, so I used the filters to narrow things down to "cakes." The filters are actually quite useful. Frankly, a paid subscription would be worth it, only $25 a year, I think. I would prefer some integration with other services, maybe add things I bought on Amazon, or pull in my "cookbooks" tag from LibraryThing. More so, I would like to be able to search all my physical books digitally. I can always use Google Books, but I don't think I've seen a service that will let me save my books and then search them. I'd love to be wrong about this, so please correct me if that's the case.

Right, so anyway, I wound up with a recipe from the 75th Anniversary Joy for Black Forest Cake. I made it a little easier, just two layers instead of three, and amusingly enough, I had half as much heavy cream as it called for (still plenty). I also had some sweet cherries I preserved in brandy back in cherry season, so that covered cherries and kirsch, and I had the cream, chocolate, just enough eggs (market tomorrow!). So here it is, the result of two hours, a lot of flipping back and forth in the Joy for base recipes, and some impatient refrigeration time.

The grand irony here, of course, is that I just used up all the cream in the cake, and now have nothing to put in my coffee.

LC-Primary Sources

I recently became more interested in exploring the Library of Congress both as a resource, an entity, and (because everything is right now) as a place to potentially work. Today I ran across this in my news feed: The Library of Congress Teacher's Page. It's intended to provide primary sources for the typical classroom lesson, and dabbles in most of the standard themes we all went through in school.

Several things struck me immediately. First, there are pre-constructed lesson plans available (there's not log in to the site, which is nice. Yay free information!). Now this may just be me, but I'd be irked if I knew my teacher was pulling something straight off the internet. However, using some of these for ideas and as support could be good. An example:

I'm interested in WWII, so I browse down the lesson plan list (by theme) to there, and find... mostly sources from the great depression. Hm. Actually there's nothing from the war in there, so I try "What is an American." This gets me a reference to de Crevecoeur (surprise), and some "life history" stories collected by the WPA. There's also an extensive, drawn out lesson plan, which (dear god) takes up classes from September to June! eesh. In any case, a teacher who knows what they want to present to the class could use the lesson plan themes to track down the sources. Kind of neat, but like most things on the internet, a lot of links to click through to find what you want.

A simple search using the search box on the front page brings up a few more hits for "World War Two", but it's still all within lesson plans and feels like it's being handed to me: This is what you should know! *ribbon on top* The point of the Teacher pages is primary sources, and if you dig a little you can get to a good chunk of information, but it can't possibly be everything the Library has. However, I do definitely support using primary sources for research, as they allow students to put more effort into reading and analyzing, unlike standard textbooks. Students will also get first hand perspectives and different voices from a primary source, which makes the experience of learning less monotonous, and hopefully more engaging.

Without the structure of a lesson plan, I think it's wildly entertaining to just browse the collections. And just in case everything the Library has isn't enough, they provide a nicely selected set of links from the outside.