Gettin’ Twiggy With It
Feature
The web has changed a lot since Drupal 7 was released in 2011.
We went from a simple world where a webpage was 960px wide (and 12 grids) to a complex new responsive world, with gazillions of different screen sizes and resolutions, all controlled by the same markup.
We have seen the introduction of HTML5 and CSS animations, and been witness to the much-anticipated death of IE 6 (and its ill-bred cousin IE 7). No more “IE 6 tax”!
However, all the changes weren’t happy ones; many problems made it difficult for Angry Themers to get their job done. In March 2012 the Drupal frontend community finally got fed up: fed up with database injections (and hacks to get the theme working) and fed up with booting up IDE programs (required to help unravel something-or-other so you can figure out what the heck you’re looking at).
But throwing tantrums in the issue queue got us nowhere.
It was time for the frontend community to band together and demand the change we wanted, which wasn’t Drupal’s “one markup to rule them all, three divs, and four classes” approach. It was time for the frontend developers and the backend developers to start talking.
“Nobody told us what to do.”
- webchick
At Frontend United in Amsterdam, and the simultaneous codesprint in San Francisco, the PHP template system Twig made its appearance and showed us that we could have the best of both worlds; a secure theme layer that was simple AND logical… and the death of the Arrays-of-Doom™.
Old and Busted™ <?php print $foo; ?>
The New Hotness™ {{ foo }}
Our mission is to make the Frontend experience a happy one. The goals are simple:
- Start with Nothing, add markup & classes as needed
- Build from usecases – think of the 90%, not the “what-if”
- Provide tools & visibility
- Don't dumb it down, complex situations might require a complex template