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Less than 5 months ago I posted a review of "Drupal 5 Themes" by Ric Shreves. I was really jazzed to have our first book dedicated to theming Drupal. But I was concerned that it was trailing too far behind Drupal's release schedule. At that time, I had already launched my first Drupal 6 site and was working on my exit plan from Drupal 5 development.

5 months later, I'm still working on my exit plan from Drupal 5 and now I have a tool to help me. "Drupal 6 Themes" by Ric Shreves has moved me closer to being Drupal 5 free. On a personal note, I have vowed to start all new projects on Drupal 6 and I'm sure to reach for this book. Keep up the pace Ric, Drupal 7 is closer than you think.

So many great Drupal books have come out this year (at least in title). I have not been able to look at them all yet. The maturing of Drupal as a platform is reflected in more focused books and Drupal theming deserves some focused attention. Theming is increasingly stretching the traditional tool-kit of the designer. No longer can the designer just turn over their work to be implemented by the developer. Gone are the days when designers can remain naive to server side scripting (PHP).

Some big changes have come in Drupal 6 theming. Themes, like modules, now have .info files, allowing us to enumerate and version our themes with out having to load the entire code. Hook_theme() is our new friend, theme functions must now be registered instead of being discovered on the fly. But the most interesting change for me, is that themes can now override core- and module-defined CSS files. I can't tell you how much time I have wasted tracking that class down to some random module style sheet gone wild. A new Jquery version is nice too. Ric covers all of these new features and simplifies the basics.

I am definitely recommending this book to designers and Drupal beginners. It covers all the basics and gives you a running start at developing your first Drupal 6 theme. But I was disappointed, as in the previous book, there was no material on how to theme the most common contributed modules like CCK, Views and Panels. Drupal's true glory and power come when you successfully mashup 30+ modules on top of Drupal core. I guess we need even more focused books titles like, "Drupal 6 Views 2 Theming".