Interesting byproducts from the user node Summer of Code project

When looking for a flower, don't miss the bird ...

Not an old wisdom or proverb, but something I just made up ...

In exploration, nature, science and even business, one must be ready for pleasant surprises.

Countless times in history, a scientist would be looking for something in their experiments, only to stumble across something completely different. The same is true in in exploration (Columbus was seeking Asia),

Similar surprises can happen in software too.

Wolfgang Ziegler (fago) is one of Google Summer of Code students for 2006, whom I am co-mentoring with Owen Barton.

Wolfgang's task is to make user profiles be nodes using CCK in Drupal. The result is the node profile project.

However, perhaps more interesting than the original project are two byproducts:

• The views fusion module, which allows "fusing" together more than one view. It requires a patch to views though, and perhaps Earl Miles can review and commit that in the near future.
• The pageroute module, which allows wizard like forms and page navigation. This is a long awaited feature that would allow for questionnaires, surveys, etc.
• The nodefamily module, which is yet another node to node relations module.

These modules will be separated out into their own projects eventually, with more detailed descriptions for each one.

Resources

• Mailing list post by Wolfgang on nodeprofile and views fusion.
• Groups post on nodeprofile and views fusion.
• Post by Evan Leeson on his blog.