Default theme implementations: a guide for module developers who want sweet love from Morten and JohnAlbin

You only need to peak into the Views module's issue queue to see horror stories about trying to design sane default theme implementations that appeal to designers and themers. “Needs more classes!” “Too many divs!” “This CSS is awful!” “Earl, make me a pony!”

It may seem like designers and themers just like to complain, but there are some simple steps module developers can follow to make their modules every designers’ wet dream.

Come learn sensible guidelines about how to build a default theme implementation from JohnAlbin (twitter), one of Drupal 7’s top contributors and co-author of the upcoming book, Learning Drupal 7 module development.

• A quick primer on the theme layer
• Theme functions, templates, or render elements?
• Markup, $classes and $attributes
• Accessibility goodness
• Getting CSS help

Even if you think you already know how to build great theme implementations, Drupal 7 introduces several new best practices. You could spend time digging through code and documentation finding them, but why not let John spoon feed these tidbits to you.