CivicActions

Many folk don't know that the ACLU has a TV series called "The Freedom Files". Season 2 can be seen on PBS stations throughout the country. Episodes can also be viewed online at aclu.tv which we re-launched for the new season recently.

What is one of the best tips to get out of the creative slump? Need to find that extra juice for your Drupal theme?

It may be simple, but I love to use Flickr for my inspiration!

Flickr has millions of photos, and thousands of groups to showcase amazing work.

Vandelay Design has compiled a list of 99 Flickr groups to help get you unstuck, such as:

http://flickr.com/groups/webdesign-inspiration/
http://flickr.com/groups/illustrationnow/
http://flickr.com/groups/psdtuts/
http://flickr.com/groups/photoshop/
http://flickr.com/groups/designtype/
http://flickr.com/groups/yourvector/

Inspired! That's the way we work!

In the spirit of the "Data Sprint," and the "Testing Sprint", Friday 5/9 through Sunday 5/11, we are meeting in what is being dubbed the "Search Sprint" at the University of Minnesota.

The good news is that CivicActions is busy! The bad news is that I had hoped to prepare more, but this date has really snuck up on me. My plane leaves tomorrow, and I've neglected preparing at all. I was asked to write this blog several weeks ago (sorry).

Earlier this weekDrupalCamp Vancouver Sessions were announced and 2 by CivicActioners were among them. Robin's session on "Introduction To Module Development" will be on Friday and 2pm. I heard Robin give a this talk for Six Hour Startup folks a few weeks ago, and even though I am no developer, it sounded great and others seemed to benefit from it.

Last week the Witness Hub was updated with new enhancements and features -- most obviously, the Hub Map is now also on the home page!

Here is a video demonstration:

This feature required asynchronous loading of the Hub Map, including it's full-screen switcher and chunk marker loader code and features, on-load of the 'Map' tab (a Hub-customized version of jQuery tabs).

It is well documented/recognized that Drupal is really not very good at picking and sticking with a nomenclature that makes sense to the un-indoctrinated. The recent user testing at UMN made that pretty clear.

As the person on the team who is often working on the configuration of a website and running into the language in the GUI and then explaining the newly built site to the client it is often not until I do the latter that I realize how convoluted some of words used in Drupal are.

Usability testing (hereafter "UT") is getting a lot of attention in Drupal -- and rightly so IMHO. If we aim to have "100%" test coverage on Drupal's code and functionality for Drupal 7, it stands to reason we also need test "coverage" on Drupal's usability. If not, it's far too easy for bad interfaces to be developed that pass all the functional and unit tests, but fail miserably in the real world!

Jimmy Berry (aka boombatower) of GHOP fame plans to take the initial (but giant) steps in this direction in the Google Summer of code 2008.

Hello!

Just a quick note to let people know on the planet and elsewhere that I've developed a short tutorial on setting up a workflow-ng event and using arguments / handlers based on the flag_content module.

It's available at:

Workflow NG tutorial and how-to

This is not for the faint of grey matter... sorry, no screencasts or tweets. Just a lot of code. I will be posting a screencast / some screenshots sometime soon, but for now, this one is for the geeks.

Enjoy!

Jacob

I had the joy of attending Linuxfest Northwest on April 26 in Bellingham, WA. The weather was great (just like last year), and the atmosphere relaxed and fun.

Linuxfest is a 2-day community event, run by volunteers and free to the public. It is such a cozy atmosphere, and it is easy to interact with the speakers and the exhibitors.

Introduction

Amnesty International has been advocating for and protecting human rights and human rights legislation internationally for the past 46 years. Its reputation and the foundation of Amnesty sections in most countries also has made it one of the most recognizable names in the world.