michael's blog

Ever need to create additional search blocks for your Drupal installation? One use might be so that you can theme or position the block differently depending on which page the block appears on.

It's actually quite easy to do - all you need to do is create a new module that implements "hook_block" and then create a new block and call the "search_box" function (from search.module) to populate the box with the correct form elements. Here's the code:

I recently worked on a project (based on Drupal 4.7 - but this technique works in Drupal 5 as well - more info at the end of this post) where I had to figure out the best way to assign unique icons to individual in menu within a Drupal block. As you may or may not know, in Drupal 4.7, items in item-lists are output without individual identifiers (class names or ids). This is problematic in that there is no way to the target each menu item.

Several people have asked me now what video podcasts I subscribe to on iTunes, so I thought I'd post the list here:

Everytime I have to dig a little deeper into the views module, I'm always more and more impressed with the thought that went into the module by Earl Miles and the other authors. A recently had a request from a client to modify the "more" link that is shown at the bottom of blocks that are generated by views.

I've been asked what audio podcasts I listen to by several friends and acquaintances. Rather than re-writing the same email over and over, I thought I'd post the list here: