Drupal 8 Upcoming Features

Magic Logix | 3234 Commander Drive Carrollton, TX 75006 |

Phone: 214.694.2162 |

Fax: 972.692.5737 | www.magiclogix.com

Hassan Bawab

Founder and CEO of Magic Logix

www.magiclogix.com

Twitter: @HassanBawab

LinkedIn: @HassanBawab

Wikipedia: @Hassan_Bawab


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, it is Diﬀerent.

One

of the major roadblocks to Drupal's
growth was that companies had a hard time
ﬁnding enough Drupal talent.

One reason for this lack of talent, was that
Drupal had shied away from object-oriented
programming, the kind of code most
programmers are familiar with.

Instead, Drupal used procedural programming,
and Drupal 7 was particularly complex
because of its heavy reliance upon structured
arrays.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Why it is Diﬀerent!
By contrast, Drupal 8 uses a Symfony2
framework. This new framework means that
the nodes, modules, ﬁelds and views of Drupal
are now all arranged in object-oriented design
patterns, which will be more familiar to Drupal
novitiates who are familiar with other types of
programming.

I hope that Symfony2 will make future software
updates faster and easier. The downside of
switching to a more traditional, object-oriented
approach is that developers who were familiar
with previous versions of Drupal but not very
familiar with object-oriented programming are
likely to face a very steep learning curve.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Important Core Module Changes -1
In previous versions of Drupal, including Drupal 7, it was
necessary to add a number of contributed modules to
the core module just to create an average, gardenvariety website. Several new modules have been added
to the Drupal 8 core module that eliminate the need for
adding these contributed (or "contrib" in Drupal-speak)
modules. Here's a list of some of the key Drupal 8 core
improvements:

v  CKEditor: One of the top complaints that Drupal
developers have is its lack of a good WYSIWYG editor.
CKEditor comes with Drupal 8. Although its default
setting is set to disabled, developers are cheering to
see the editor included within the core.

v  Views: Before Drupal 8, the Views module was the No.
1 contributed Drupal module being used by developers.
Adding Views to the core is another Drupal 8 change
that developers are very enthusiastic about.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Important Core Module Changes -2
v  Picture: The Picture module, which is one of many new
modules that have HTML5 and responsive design in
mind, automatically resizes images for diﬀerent screen
sizes.
v  New Types: email, telephone, date, link, etc…


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Drupal Mobile Initiative
When Drupal 7 was released in 2011, mobile website use
was just beginning to hit its stride. Web developers quickly
got busy creating responsive, adaptive and mobile-only
versions of their websites.

In my opinion, Drupal 7 was not as ready for mobile as I
would have liked it to be. If I had to start Drupal from
scratch, I would have created it with mobile in mind ﬁrst.

The "mobile ﬁrst" design philosophy has taken hold all
over the Web, and I was expecting that Drupal 8 would not
be left behind.

"Drupal Mobile Initiative” makes sure the new release was
ready for mobile users, both from the point of view of
mobile developers and from the point of view of mobile
website users.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Drupal Mobile Initiative by John
Albin Wilkins
When Wilkins took the lead for the Mobile Initiative, he
outlined ﬁve major points that he wanted the next version
of Drupal to cover:

1. Drupal should have the ability to support native apps.
2. Drupal should support HTML5 and web apps.

3. Web developers should be able to easily create content
from their mobile devices.

4. Every core theme should be a responsive theme.

5. Front-end performance should be improved.
(Source: http://palantir.net/blog/drupal-8-mobile-initiative)


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Multilingual Support
Another big change for non-English speakers in Drupal 8
was its new multilingual support. In the past, developers
had to download a number of diﬀerent modules to help
them translate Drupal into their native languages.

Instead, a small number of modules was built into the
Drupal core that vastly improved multilingual Drupal
support.

As of October 9, 2013, Drupal's development community
was still working on the ﬁnishing touches for the Drupal 8
multilingual support.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


When & Why to Choose Drupal 8 -1
The ﬁrst reason is cost. Drupal, like WordPress, Joomla
and other open source CMSs, is completely free to install
and use. Not only is the main body of Drupal free, almost
all of its extensions are also free. There are plugins that
cost money, just as there are for Joomla and for
WordPress, but the majority of even very powerful Drupal
modules are available from the development community
free of charge.

The second reason is another part of the "open source
way" ethic: friendly community support. With nearly
800,000 developers worldwide and 330,000 Drupal
websites already installed, developers can easily plug into
an international community of Drupal users who stand
ready to help. If help via Drupal forums and message
boards isn't enough, however, paid professional support
for Drupal also exists in the form of enterprise support
oﬀered by consultancies.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


The third reason is ﬂexibility. Everything in Drupal 8, even
its back-end interface, is customizable. The new core
modules mentioned above, furthermore, make Drupal 8
even easier to customize than Drupal 7.

Example; creating a custom administrative interface that
would make the back-end of the Drupal site easy to work
with for the non-techie administrators.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


The fourth reason applies specifically to eCommerce sites.
When it comes to eCommerce, Drupal provides an
excellent out-of-the-box solution. Many large eCommerce
sites choose Drupal for its eCommerce modules, payment
support and other benefits.

Finally, the fifth reason is traffic. Drupal sites can handle
heavy traffic, the kind of traffic sites like WhiteHouse.gov,
UniversalMusic.com, Zynga.com, SpringCM.com,
FrontRange.com and Duke.edu get. With a special built-in
cache system that facilitates speed, Drupal can handle
very high amounts of traffic without bogging the website
down.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


CMS Comparison Summary -1
Use WordPress when:
v  The site will be in the small to medium size range
v  Designing and rolling out the site quickly is important
v  The site is mostly informational in nature, such as a
blog, ezine or small company website
v  Ease of use is very important
v  The people who will be maintaining the site on a dayto-day basis have very little technical ability

Use Joomla when:
v  The site will be in the small to large size range yet not
huge
v  The site will include eCommerce, message boards and
password-protected material
v  A full-featured site is needed but a dedicated IT staﬀ is
not available
v  Ease of use is semi-important

.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


CMS Comparison Summary -2
Use Drupal 8 when:
v  The site will start out big and will likely get bigger and
bigger over time
v  The site will be developed by professionals
v  The site needs to handle a complex variety of content
types, from multimedia to eCommerce
v  Multilingual support is important
v  Ease of use is not that important because there is a
dedicated IT staﬀ to update and make changes the site

As this summary shows, there is not one CMS that is the
hands-down best choice in every situation. Of the three
most popular platforms, Drupal is usually the best choice
for sites that are large, complex, have big budgets and will
be maintained by professionals.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Drupal 8 Aims to Be Future-Proof
The future of the Web is a mobile future. Already, browsing
the Internet on a smartphone is more common, at least for
some demographics, than browsing the Internet on a
desktop or laptop computer. Web developers have been
scrambling to churn out responsive and adaptive website
designs that take into account the unique needs of mobile
users.

The simple answer is that Drupal 8 has been speciﬁcally
designed with mobile in mind. Dries Buytaert wants Drupal
to be the very best CMS for mobile websites, period.

Therefore, there are already a number of ready-made
themes and modules for Drupal that are designed to
speciﬁcally enhance a user's mobile experience. With
Drupal 8, all the themes the out-of-the-box software ships
with are responsive themes.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Conclusion: Drupal 8 is the Best J
Drupal 8 is one of the best, if not the very best, open
source web development platform for sites that will be
large, have a high volume of traﬃc, that may or may not
include eCommerce, that will have a number of diﬀerent
content types and that will grow over time.

Smaller sites can be made with WordPress, and small to
medium-size corporate sites can also be made with
Joomla, but for premium design capabilities and technical
capacity, Drupal is typically the better choice than either of
these two CMSs.

That might not always be the case; WordPress in particular
has come a long way from its blog engine beginnings to
where it is today. In short, however, big-budget website
projects organized by developers with a high degree of
coding literacy cannot go wrong with choosing Drupal 8.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Conclusion: Drupal 8 is the Best J
The improvements that Drupal 8 has made over Drupal 7
might take developers some time to get used to. As
Buytaert himself stated, change can be scary.

However, the Mobile Initiative, the changes to the Drupal
core modules, the added language support and other
features of Drupal 8 will be a great boon to developers
once they get used to working with the new architecture.

Thanks to changes like Symfony2, future versions of the
platform should be easier to extend and easier to update.

All of these meaningful changes that have gone into
Drupal 8 are likely to secure the CMS' place in the online
world for many years to come.


Phone: 214.694.2162 |


Drupal 8 Upcoming Features

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