FCC Sponsors API Work
The recent launch of a newly-redesigned FCC.gov web site is a big win for Drupal, and a great example of public-access APIs being built into large government web sites. Seabourne Inc.'s post about the migration also details the new contrib module, Content API, that the project spawned. Built on top of the popular Services module, it automatically exposes select content types on a Drupal site via a REST interface. A little bird told the Lullabout Roundup Cowboy that a D7 version of the module is coming soon, as well...
Give it a REST
Speaking of REST and web APIs, an interesting article by designer Luke Wroblewski discusses the potential for API driven and server-side tools to simplify the implementation of responsive web designs. Confused? Check out Jared Ponchot's article on responsive design, and developer Steve Klabnic's article, Nobody understands REST.
All Documentation Isn't Equal
ProgrammableWeb has a great guide to writing API documentation for developers. Helping developers leverage a set of tools requires more than just PHPDoc, and this article outlines the essentials. Given the explosive growth of API and "framework" style modules in the Drupal ecosystem, this guide should be a new Bible!
Drupal Dramarama
Since DrupalCon London in August, blog posts and debates about the future direction of Drupal have been hot stuff. Kent Bye's Drupal Drama podcast and Jeff Eaton's Drupal 8 article here on Lullabot.com attempt to summarize what's up. For those nervous about the discussions, taking a peek at other open source projects' internal debates might put things in perspective...
News of the Web World
For those seeking for news beyond the Drupal sphere, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Twitter has released Bootstrap, a new HTML/CSS framework that unifies various typographic and layout elements. The big-data guys over at Development Seed have written about their freshly designed web site, built using the Jekyll page rendering framework: it spits out static files and stores its data on GitHub! Meanwhile, scientists at UC Berkeley have figured out how to reconstruct video from human brain activity... Can a FieldAPI "MRI Input widget" for media fields be far behind?
Fantasy Sites Galore
Finally, the Lullabots have been hard at work prepping for the October 12th-14th Do It With Drupal conference. The ever-popular "Fantasy Sites" track will feature a series of Drupal-powered clones of well-known web sites, including NetFlix, Meetup.com, and more. Rumor has it Joe Shindelar, the mastermind behind the Marquee Module, is working on a fantasy site of his own...
