Design and Prototyping for Drupal

So What Did We Just Do Here?

As you can tell from the process that was just illustrated (and our first Practical Example in Chapter 12), there’s a lot that you can do with Views. But part of working with Views is understanding the code it creates and how to manipulate that code to get the results you want. Knowing how it works—even if you’re not the one implementing a particular site—can make it easier to envision how a given project might look in the end, and make it easier to create beautiful layouts that will be easier for your team to implement.

Recently, I worked on a massive site overhaul with my friend Claudio Luis Vera (@modulist on Drupal.org). Claudio was working on wireframes and design layout, while I focused on prototyping the site in Drupal 7. During the design process, Claudio kept finding himself getting stuck on a particular piece of the design puzzle and unable to come up with what a given page should look like—until he started thinking in terms of how Views might output the content. Simply by understanding what Views would do with the content, he was able to rapidly create and iterate designs, and we were able to more easily implement them in the prototype—and the final product.

This is the value in having an understanding of Views. It’s not always easy to figure out, but once you get the basics down, it’s that much easier to get your job done.