Views 2 hit beta recently and this felt like a good time to jump onboard and check it out. I've only been playing with it for a couple of hours, but this definitely feels like the biggest change I've encountered when going from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6.

Bear in mind that I am not a developer, so I can't really comment on the vast changes under the hood, but I wanted to highlight some initial first impressions from a themer/site builder's perspective.

Features

One of the hugest changes so far is the ability to build multiple Displays off one View. Not just a page view and a block view, but you can set up many different views and adjust the settings on each one.

Here's an overview of the view editing screen:

You'll see things here that you'll be familiar with from Views 1 -- some of the basic settings, Arguments, Fields, Sorting, Filters, etc. These work as you'd expect if you've used Views before.

Style & Row Style

There are now several more configuration options for the style of the view. You can choose between a Node and Field for your Row Style. As a Node, you get the following options:

When we started building our base theme for TopNotchThemes, the foundation on which all our Drupal themes would be built, polishing up the “Drupal default” (henceforth dubbed Drufault) was one of my top priorities. First target – primary and secondary task tabs. You'll most often see these tabs as a site administrator, when you're editing a node, user, view, etc. They're also exposed to your users most commonly on their My Account page, search, and registration/login screens.

Looking at the tabs from several other starter themes, I determined that we needed something both non-graphical and flexible. The traditional use of CSS borders and background colour to form a tab shape was a little tired looking, but it also had to be as simple as possible so that it could adapt to the wide range of designs our themes have.

I scoured the web looking for best practices for tabbed interfaces, and saw some damn sexy tabs. Then I hit on the perfect style.

Just Google It!

I admit it. I do it too. When someone asks me a question about my field that I don't have the time or the inclination to answer, I'll often tell them to "just Google it." I mean what could be easier? Go to the one site everyone knows, type in your search, click a button, get the information you're looking for. Simple. Right?

Everyday, newbies to every field are redirected to Google by well-meaning folks who know that the information they need is out there, just a quick search away. In fact there is a rapidly emerging cultural norm that there are certain questions that should be Googled rather than bothering a human to answer it. For those who ignore this norm, say on a support-oriented forum, the response can range from gentle (a helpful link that contains the Google search in question) to belligerent ("try using Google dumbass").

Chris and I presented a session at Drupalcon Boston 2008 called Designing for Drupal. We discussed how to make designs more Drupal friendly, both by adapting what you get into Drupal's terms, and by pushing more Drupal knowledge back to designers and other creative folks. Enjoy!

One thing that's become abundantly clear as we sprint toward launching TopNotchThemes: creating a theme that can be used for a variety of sites is a very different project compared to doing a theme for a particular site.

Designing for a single client has its own difficulties in the form of pixel perfection, changing designs, conflicting requirements, fluctuating budgets, and more. But you know what you're shooting for and you can pretty much tell when the theme for a site is done. It reproduces the design, delivers the functionality, and makes the client go "wow!"