As I write this, I’m on my 2nd pass through Packt Publishing's new book, Drupal 5 Themes. I thought I would address the fact that the book was written for an early version of Drupal 5 and an early version of the Zen theme. I’ve run out of time, however, so this will have to be simply a book review.
Like many of the reviews out there, I have to agree that Drupal 5 Themes feels sloppy. The table of contents starts half way through Chapter 4 in my copy and typos abound. It’s not just the grammar and construction that feels sloppy, unfortunately. I’ve tried to follow the book, to use it as a workbook. On one hand, it gives very basic instruction on how to set up and theme a Drupal 5 install, but on the other, it leaves out key details, or just kind of screws up. In Chapter 5, page 103, for example, the reader is directed to make changes to the .title tag in the style.css file, then look at the default home page to see the results. However, since the user added new text to their site way back in Chapter 2, page 54, the default home page is gone, making this exercise completely meaningless. Also on page 54, the user is instructed to add an image to their home page. They are not, however, told how to upload the image to their server via Drupal, nor that they’ll have to either a) change the input format from “filtered HTML” to “full HTML”, or b) add the <img src> tag to the list of tags “filtered HTML” allows, in order for their image to appear. Given the previous basic instructions, it seems careless not to address issues like these.
There are good points about the book. If you are not primarily a PHP programmer, you’ll appreciate the time spent on PHP. I thoroughly enjoyed stuff like the description of how phptemplate.engine works, for example, and the exercises for making changes to your site using PHP. I have a much better understanding of how all the files fit and work together in Drupal from reading Drupal 5 Themes. For this alone, it is worth the price.
Regarding my plan to provide notes to make this tome work with the latest versions of Drupal 5 and the Zen theme, there is already a lot to note just in regard to changes in Drupal and Zen. When you throw in slapdash instructions and bad grammar, it becomes all but impossible to work through the book like a manual.
If you are primarily a CSS conversant themer, as I am, you will still learn a lot from Drupal 5 Themes. Just don’t expect it to replace the spotty documentation you’ve been accessing via Drupal.org, Google and the Internet.
