Drupal-generated markup is not your friend -- use a styleguide!

The traditional approach of directly styling default Drupal markup is no longer a viable solution for any serious Drupal project. With the looming release of Drupal 8, abstracting our design patterns into manageable components will make upgrading our Drupal 7 themes possible without a total re-theme. By using a styleguide we can automate the process of isolating and cataloguing patterns, allowing us to iterate through the storm of rapid change happening on the front-end. Maintaining full controll of our design patterns also opens doors to experimenting with above-the-fold performance tuning and automated regression testing.

In this presentation I will discuss the pains of traditional CMS theming and highlight the benefits, challenges and processes around styleguide-driven development. I will also delve into how Drupal 8 and Twig makes the use of an automated styleguide even more valuable.

This session is built on top of a blog post I wrote on the PreviousNext website that was featured in the Weekly Drop and expands upon my coworker John Albin Wilkin's ideas on the same topic.