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Using Drupal
Michael J. Ross writes "After installing and learning the basics of the content management system Drupal, many Web developers do not know how to best proceed from there. They may realize that much of the programming potential of Drupal — and thus the earning potential of Drupal developers — is derived from the use of community-contributed modules that greatly extend Drupal's power. But there are thousands of such modules, with no objective direction as to which ones are best suited for particular tasks, and what bugs and other flaws could trip up the developer. These programmers need a thorough guide as to which modules are the most promising for the development of the most common types of Web sites. A new book, Using Drupal, aims to fill this need." Keep reading for the rest of Michael's review.
Using Drupal
author
Angela Byron, Addison Berry, Nathan Haug, Jeff Eaton, James Walker, and Jeff Robbins
pages
490
publisher
O'Reilly Media
rating
9/10
reviewer
Michael J. Ross
ISBN
978-0596515805
summary
Key contributed Drupal modules put to use creating sample sites.
Published by O'Reilly Media on 16 December 2008, under the ISBN 978-0596515805, the book is authored by Angela Byron, Addison Berry, Nathan Haug, Jeff Eaton, James Walker, and Jeff Robbins — all of whom are affiliated with Lullabot and are actively involved in the Drupal community and knowledgeable about Drupal's core and plug-in modules. Despite the old adage about having too many cooks in the kitchen, a technical book of this nature should benefit from having half a dozen authors, since each one will have his or her fortes, and the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts, as a result of this complementary expertise.
This title appears to be O'Reilly's first — and, as of this writing, only — Drupal book. This is in no way astonishing, given that O'Reilly has never been known for pushing books too quickly through development and production, simply to gain "first mover advantage." Rather, they generally work to create higher-quality efforts that will better stand the test of time — unlike the "shovel" books that some other publishers tend to push out the door, with less coherence and more errata. As a consequence, in the technical libraries of veteran programmers, one tends to see a disproportionately high number of book covers sporting pictures of animals.
On the publisher's Web page for Using Drupal, visitors can read the book's description, table of contents, colophon, errata (of which there are currently several), a link for purchasing the book in electronic form (in formats such as PDF, EPUB, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket), and a link for viewing the book immediately online, in the Safari Books Online system. There is a simple forum for the book, which currently contains seven posts, three of which already have replies from one of the book's authors and from an O'Reilly community manager. There is a browse system that allows the visitor to read portions of each section of each chapter, and thus preview the book before purchasing it. It even includes the illustrations within each previewed section, but for some reason does not include the figure numbers within the captions.
The authors have created their own site dedicated to the book, where visitors will find brief author biographies largely similar to those found at the very end of the book, with links to the authors' profile pages on Drupal.org. Lastly, there is a download page for the source code, which comprises a copy of Drupal 6, all of the contributed modules and themes needed to complete the hands-on exercises, and the supplementary resource files for those exercises, such as logos and product images. There is a change log for the download file, and yet no mention on the page — or even in the book itself, as far as I can tell — as to which version in the 6.x release series was used for the book and in the download package.
Oddly, neither the publisher's site nor the authors' site appears to mention the free downloadable chapter (Chapter 9, "Event Management"), although it is offered in an article posted in the blog section of Do It with Drupal.
After a foreword by Dries Buytaert — Drupal's founder and project lead — the book continues for 490 pages in total, organized into eleven chapters and three appendices. Nine of the chapters each begin with a description of a case study that will be used for illustrative purposes, followed by some implementation notes, which includes discussion of the candidate modules that could be used for this particular case study, and the trade-offs among them. The contributed modules that are chosen for the implementation and their capabilities are summarized, and then further explained with hands-on exercises — in which the particular modules are utilized and configured. Each of these nine chapters takes the reader through the development of a complete Web site, and is wrapped up with discussion of additional modules applicable to the kind of Web site being created. In Chapters 2 through 10, the case studies are: a simple Drupal site that supports client editing, a job posting board, a product reviews site, a wiki, a site for managing publishing workflow, a photo gallery, multilingual sites, an entertainment events management site, and an online store. Chapter 1 provides an overview of Drupal — covering modules, users, nodes, organizational schemes, and content types — preceded by a brief history of content management systems. Chapter 11 explores site theming, with details on the files and other elements that make up a theme, and how to customize them. The book's three appendices cover installing and upgrading Drupal, choosing the right modules for a job, and a list of the modules and themes used in the book.
The book's material is current with Drupal version 6, but should be of some value to any developer opting, for whatever reason, to stick with version 5. Speaking of versions, the authors should have mentioned which version of Drupal they chose, including the minor release number. The Drupal code in the aforesaid download package indicates that the chosen version is 6.4.
This book is unique, in that most if not all other Drupal books on the market are either introductory in nature — which at best devote only a single chapter to discussing third-party modules contributed by developers — or more advanced, specializing in a particular subject area, such as Drupal site security or e-commerce. Using Drupal, just as the title indicates, examines the detailed usage of best-of-breed modules to accomplish specific goals that one often encounters as a Web developer.
One of the most valuable aspects of software development books written by veteran programmers, is their discussions of various solutions to a particular problem — regardless of its size or complexity — and the reasons why they chose one approach instead of any of the others. Using Drupal is no exception. The authors examine the advantages and disadvantages of various third-party modules, even those that were not chosen for implementing the sample Web sites.
In any computer programming book, screenshots and other figures can be most helpful to the reader, because they reinforce the narrative descriptions of the cumulative results of all the steps up to that point. The screenshots are even valuable to someone following along on his own computer, because they provide immediate confirmation that he has not missed a critical step in the process. Using Drupal offers a generous amount of such screenshots, as well as information tables that help in visually breaking up the text. The only weakness with some of the screenshots is the lack of contrast between the text and the background, resulting in a dark gray shown on a light gray background — not always clearly readable.
The book is substantial in length and content, and naturally it cannot adequately cover dozens of sorts of Web sites. But clearly the book would have been more complete if it contained a chapter explaining how to allow content to be viewable by a limited set of authenticated users. An ideal case study for this would be the implementation of an e-zine site, for which prospective subscribers could view the homepage and other marketing material, but only subscribers could read the actual e-zine's contents. Even better would be to make this sample site fee-based, and show how to accept payments through PayPal (or some other payment systems for which there are Drupal modules) and possibly validate new subscribers automatically and instantly, using PayPal's IPN feature.
The flaws of this book are few and minor. There are unreported errata, most of them grammatical — e.g., "as [the] ability" (page 10) and "modules [that] were" (page 89) — which are to be expected in the first edition of any technical book. Speaking of errata, on the publisher's Web site, the errata should be sorted — or sortable — by page number, so it is much faster for people to see if a discovered erratum has already been reported. In addition, the URLs within the book that do not contain any filename (e.g., "http://www.example.com"; page 8) are in most if not all cases missing the trailing "/" (the root directory). Yet my primary complaint pertains to its production, and not its writing: For countless lines within the text, the spaces separating the words are too narrow, making it difficult to distinguish the words from one another when reading rapidly. As a consequence, each one of these lines almost appears to be a single word. (Skilled programmers know the great value of using whitespace in their code for enhancing readability; the same is certainly true for the printed word.) This readability problem is exacerbated by two factors: The ink color does not appear to be pure black, but instead a dark gray, which possibly has the advantage of producing less glare, but provides less contrast. Secondly, the serif font selected (whose name does not seem to be identified in the book — a common practice ages ago) has quite thin curves, which arguably does make the font face more stylish, but diminishes readability.
In terms of the target audience, the authors do not assume that the reader knows PHP (although some is shown in the chapter on theming), but they do assume that the reader is comfortable installing a PHP-based content management system and all of its required technologies, and familiar enough with Drupal to be able to navigate through the administrative area, download and add modules, and perform other basic admin tasks. Programmers just getting started with Drupal will benefit the most from this book, while experienced Drupal programmers will most likely learn some hitherto unknown best practices, and perhaps even some valuable modules or techniques that the individual has never seen before.
Using Drupal is a detailed and information-packed guide to the most promising contributed modules, and how they can be best employed for creating common types of Web sites. Drupal developers should find this a valuable part of their technical library, especially when they begin creating one of those types of Web sites for the first time.
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer and freelance writer.
You can purchase Using Drupal from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
This title appears to be O'Reilly's first — and, as of this writing, only — Drupal book. This is in no way astonishing, given that O'Reilly has never been known for pushing books too quickly through development and production, simply to gain "first mover advantage." Rather, they generally work to create higher-quality efforts that will better stand the test of time — unlike the "shovel" books that some other publishers tend to push out the door, with less coherence and more errata. As a consequence, in the technical libraries of veteran programmers, one tends to see a disproportionately high number of book covers sporting pictures of animals.
On the publisher's Web page for Using Drupal, visitors can read the book's description, table of contents, colophon, errata (of which there are currently several), a link for purchasing the book in electronic form (in formats such as PDF, EPUB, and Kindle-compatible Mobipocket), and a link for viewing the book immediately online, in the Safari Books Online system. There is a simple forum for the book, which currently contains seven posts, three of which already have replies from one of the book's authors and from an O'Reilly community manager. There is a browse system that allows the visitor to read portions of each section of each chapter, and thus preview the book before purchasing it. It even includes the illustrations within each previewed section, but for some reason does not include the figure numbers within the captions.
The authors have created their own site dedicated to the book, where visitors will find brief author biographies largely similar to those found at the very end of the book, with links to the authors' profile pages on Drupal.org. Lastly, there is a download page for the source code, which comprises a copy of Drupal 6, all of the contributed modules and themes needed to complete the hands-on exercises, and the supplementary resource files for those exercises, such as logos and product images. There is a change log for the download file, and yet no mention on the page — or even in the book itself, as far as I can tell — as to which version in the 6.x release series was used for the book and in the download package.
Oddly, neither the publisher's site nor the authors' site appears to mention the free downloadable chapter (Chapter 9, "Event Management"), although it is offered in an article posted in the blog section of Do It with Drupal.
After a foreword by Dries Buytaert — Drupal's founder and project lead — the book continues for 490 pages in total, organized into eleven chapters and three appendices. Nine of the chapters each begin with a description of a case study that will be used for illustrative purposes, followed by some implementation notes, which includes discussion of the candidate modules that could be used for this particular case study, and the trade-offs among them. The contributed modules that are chosen for the implementation and their capabilities are summarized, and then further explained with hands-on exercises — in which the particular modules are utilized and configured. Each of these nine chapters takes the reader through the development of a complete Web site, and is wrapped up with discussion of additional modules applicable to the kind of Web site being created. In Chapters 2 through 10, the case studies are: a simple Drupal site that supports client editing, a job posting board, a product reviews site, a wiki, a site for managing publishing workflow, a photo gallery, multilingual sites, an entertainment events management site, and an online store. Chapter 1 provides an overview of Drupal — covering modules, users, nodes, organizational schemes, and content types — preceded by a brief history of content management systems. Chapter 11 explores site theming, with details on the files and other elements that make up a theme, and how to customize them. The book's three appendices cover installing and upgrading Drupal, choosing the right modules for a job, and a list of the modules and themes used in the book.
The book's material is current with Drupal version 6, but should be of some value to any developer opting, for whatever reason, to stick with version 5. Speaking of versions, the authors should have mentioned which version of Drupal they chose, including the minor release number. The Drupal code in the aforesaid download package indicates that the chosen version is 6.4.
This book is unique, in that most if not all other Drupal books on the market are either introductory in nature — which at best devote only a single chapter to discussing third-party modules contributed by developers — or more advanced, specializing in a particular subject area, such as Drupal site security or e-commerce. Using Drupal, just as the title indicates, examines the detailed usage of best-of-breed modules to accomplish specific goals that one often encounters as a Web developer.
One of the most valuable aspects of software development books written by veteran programmers, is their discussions of various solutions to a particular problem — regardless of its size or complexity — and the reasons why they chose one approach instead of any of the others. Using Drupal is no exception. The authors examine the advantages and disadvantages of various third-party modules, even those that were not chosen for implementing the sample Web sites.
In any computer programming book, screenshots and other figures can be most helpful to the reader, because they reinforce the narrative descriptions of the cumulative results of all the steps up to that point. The screenshots are even valuable to someone following along on his own computer, because they provide immediate confirmation that he has not missed a critical step in the process. Using Drupal offers a generous amount of such screenshots, as well as information tables that help in visually breaking up the text. The only weakness with some of the screenshots is the lack of contrast between the text and the background, resulting in a dark gray shown on a light gray background — not always clearly readable.
The book is substantial in length and content, and naturally it cannot adequately cover dozens of sorts of Web sites. But clearly the book would have been more complete if it contained a chapter explaining how to allow content to be viewable by a limited set of authenticated users. An ideal case study for this would be the implementation of an e-zine site, for which prospective subscribers could view the homepage and other marketing material, but only subscribers could read the actual e-zine's contents. Even better would be to make this sample site fee-based, and show how to accept payments through PayPal (or some other payment systems for which there are Drupal modules) and possibly validate new subscribers automatically and instantly, using PayPal's IPN feature.
The flaws of this book are few and minor. There are unreported errata, most of them grammatical — e.g., "as [the] ability" (page 10) and "modules [that] were" (page 89) — which are to be expected in the first edition of any technical book. Speaking of errata, on the publisher's Web site, the errata should be sorted — or sortable — by page number, so it is much faster for people to see if a discovered erratum has already been reported. In addition, the URLs within the book that do not contain any filename (e.g., "http://www.example.com"; page 8) are in most if not all cases missing the trailing "/" (the root directory). Yet my primary complaint pertains to its production, and not its writing: For countless lines within the text, the spaces separating the words are too narrow, making it difficult to distinguish the words from one another when reading rapidly. As a consequence, each one of these lines almost appears to be a single word. (Skilled programmers know the great value of using whitespace in their code for enhancing readability; the same is certainly true for the printed word.) This readability problem is exacerbated by two factors: The ink color does not appear to be pure black, but instead a dark gray, which possibly has the advantage of producing less glare, but provides less contrast. Secondly, the serif font selected (whose name does not seem to be identified in the book — a common practice ages ago) has quite thin curves, which arguably does make the font face more stylish, but diminishes readability.
In terms of the target audience, the authors do not assume that the reader knows PHP (although some is shown in the chapter on theming), but they do assume that the reader is comfortable installing a PHP-based content management system and all of its required technologies, and familiar enough with Drupal to be able to navigate through the administrative area, download and add modules, and perform other basic admin tasks. Programmers just getting started with Drupal will benefit the most from this book, while experienced Drupal programmers will most likely learn some hitherto unknown best practices, and perhaps even some valuable modules or techniques that the individual has never seen before.
Using Drupal is a detailed and information-packed guide to the most promising contributed modules, and how they can be best employed for creating common types of Web sites. Drupal developers should find this a valuable part of their technical library, especially when they begin creating one of those types of Web sites for the first time.
Michael J. Ross is a Web developer and freelance writer.
You can purchase Using Drupal from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
"Pronouncing 'Drupal'"
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
I like Drupal. I've used it many times and have always thought of it as one of the better CMS packages available.
What I would like to see, would be a more freeing kind of extensibility, so that I could whip up fast plugins that would behave in a very reliable and systematic manner. I've tried to extend it in the past but have always preferred how easily Wordpress reacts to new code. The Wordpress docs and forums appear to have a faster method of making information available to developers.
However, if I was planning a brochure-based website that would have some fresh content from time-to-time, I would not object to Drupal, but only if I was certain that I would never have to extend the core mechanics of what they offer... it's simply too unpredictable (at least as of this past August, which is when I last fiddled with it).
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
..isn't that some tranny with a show on tv?
Disclaimer: I am one of the book authors (Angela - hi! :))
Just to address a couple of points:
In Appendix C, there are version numbers of all the modules and themes used in the book, including the version of Drupal (6.4). I've now added a note to the http://usingdrupal.com/source_code as well. :)
*forehead slap* I can't believe we forgot to put that there. I blame the holiday rush. ;) Added a note to the front page of http://usingdrupal.com/.
I'll also speak with our contacts over at O'Reilly about mirroring these items on their "official" infrastructure.
Yes, the very first chapter written for this book (back on Drupal 5 at the time) was one on Organic Groups which covered the access control aspects in-depth. Unfortunately, due to our book schedule vs. Drupal 6's contributed module release cycle, we had to chop this one. :( I'm hoping that if we end up doing a second edition of the book for Drupal 7, we can add this chapter back in. :)
If you have a chance, please report those! While we fell behind a bit during the holidays, we're hoping to get back caught up on errata review within the next couple of weeks.
Also, a quick correction to the review. In the author list, Jeff Robbins is listed twice, both in the review text and the book info table.
Thanks again!
I've been using Drupal for a variety of website tasks for about a year now. As a novice (at best) programmer I'm more interested in the functionality of the tools than in customizing them or inventing new tools, so for me it's important that my content management tools be fully functional. So far, Drupal's only real gotcha is the lack of seamless upgrades. This isn't a huge problem if you're willing to spend several minutes/hours every week or two upgrading your site, however it does become an issue if you're handling multiple sites. Whereas Wordpress has a built in upgrade function, Drupal requires you to manually delete existing directories and upload the new code every time there is a core update. Modules are a bit easier in that you only need to delete and upload that module's directory, and a well organized site keep the modules away from the core code (e.g., in /sites/all/modules instead of in /modules).
Security seems pretty good so far, with just a few core security updates over the last year, I think. Modules often have more security issues, but the most popular modules seems almost as stable as the core. I believe both CCK and Views, two immensely popular modules, are being ported into core for Drupal 7.
Drupal's usability is good once you get used to the organizational structure but there is a steep learning curve because of all the options. For example, installing a module requires the upload of the code into the /sites/all/modules/... directory, enabling of the module in the module control section of the site, running of the update.php script (as the root user of the site), and setting of the permissions for the modules (which is often a complex process). Granted you don't do module installation that often but it's a serious process when you do.
Too long to proofread! Sorry for the wall of text...Drupal's worth a try and I'll probably pickup this book to see what is has to offer.
Like trees blowing in the wind.
http://www.lullabot.com/audiocast/the_drupal_song
Amuse/annoy your coworkers!
I also did a review of this book. It's awesome. Much better with hands-on, practical walkthroughs than any others out there.
~~~
Drupal themes from TopNotchThemes
I can't shake the feeling this is something of a troll, but I'll bite. There are two reasons that I will purchase a tangible copy (physical--as someone else mentioned, dead tree):
1) I like to have a physical copy of a text. Sure, digital prints are easier to search and just as easy to browse, but there are times when I'd like to have something to read through no matter where I am, particularly if I don't happen to have a laptop with me. (Increasingly rare, but likely. Doctor's offices come to mind; there's no way I'm reading the cruft they have stacked atop a bare table in the waiting room.)
2) It's a great way to show your support for the authors' work and to help offset the publication costs. I've done that with the Baen Library before. I'll read some of their texts online, and if I like it, I'll go to the bookstore to purchase a couple of copies for myself and friends. If the author is especially interesting, I'll even buy a few of his or her works while I'm there if I haven't read them.
The desire to have a tangible asset isn't the result of ignorance or stupidity (though, I'd argue it's pretty stupid to waste your own paper printing out the entire thing when there's a perfectly good bound copy you can buy), and I think it's petty to attribute it to that.
He who has no
I've read a couple books, but I still don't know how to use it. All the books I read thus far spent 1/2 the time on installing it, which should only be a chapter. The rest of the time, they talk about "nodes" which is too abstract a concept for my friend Prudence, who runs a counseling website to grasp.
What we really need is a guide on "do this to make a menu", "do this to make a blog", "do this to enter the blog article", do this..., etc. I really have no idea to layout a site and get what I want. So there Drupal sits, well-installed, but doing nothing. Because that's what the books covered.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Disclaimer: I am one of the book authors (Angela - hi! :))
All of us are contributors to the Drupal handbook. In fact, Addison Berry is the Drupal project's documentation team coordinator. We definitely did NOT want to write a book that simply packaged up the Drupal community's hard work and slapped a $50 price tag on it. :P
The Drupal handbook is a fantastic resource, and is very useful to get you past installation and upgrading hurdles, provides collection of "snippets" for doing common (and not so common) tasks code-wise, is a great reference for Drupal developers, and offers many other things. So to that extent, yes. Chapters 1 (Intro to Drupal) and Appendix A (Installing/Upgrading) could be easily gleaned with the free, readily-available community documentation. If all you want to do is learn how to install Drupal and get a simple vocabulary lesson, do not buy this book! :) Read http://drupal.org/getting-started.
However, something the Drupal handbook is not very good for is a project-based, soup-to-nuts, "Here's how you DO stuff in Drupal." Nor for "here are the modules that are awesome and here are modules that are less awesome, and here's why this one is awesome for certain things but not others." A cohesive guide on this type of information is single-handedly the biggest obstacle people getting started with Drupal face, and is something that really doesn't lend itself well to 500+ documentation contributors scattered across the globe writing piece-meal page-by-page.
And that stuff is the focus of the book.
Slightly off topic, but is Drupal the best option for someone with little to no programming knowledge, such as myself? I'm just trying to set up your typical blog-style site with daily posts and the ability to let people comment on each item... nothing fancy. Currently I use Joomla. While I like much about it, I am still finding it difficult to manipulate the template's visuals to my liking. Also, it would be nice if the CMS came with integrated forums, eliminating the need for multiple user accounts. I've tried using a user-made "bridge" which I couldn't get working.
"Women. Can't live with 'em. Pass the beer nuts." -Norm
I have extensive experience building in Drupal -- module and theme development.
I've noticed that immediate impression people have about Drupal is that it's only a blog CMS. But it isn't so at all. I welcome you to visit Drupal founder's blog, where he lists all interesting sites that use Drupal. Sometimes even I am (pleasantly) surprised at the ogranizations and institutions who move on to use Drupal. Check it out: http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites
o_O
This book fills out the lineup of Drupal books rather nicely:
Building Powerful and Robust Websites With Drupal 6: good intro book for the non-programmer
Learning Drupal 6 Module Development: the basics of module development
Pro Drupal Development, 2nd ed: exhaustive documentation/reference of how Drupal works, system by system
Using Drupal: Now that you understand the above, how you put it all together
And there are some other ones for specific applications like multimedia and education.
Have you looked at Concrete5? One of the things I've enjoyed about it is the use of 'blocks' for defining/extending functionality. The UI is also one of the best I've used and search is built on lucene via zend (framework).
It's a little sparse (you won't find nearly as many pre-made plugins, ala Wordpress) but if you need a clean base to build on you might like it.
Quack, quack.
Implementation languages seldom affect what can be developed. I could write a crappy CMS in Python, or C, or RoR, or Perl. The problem is the data and how it is structured. Usually its an interface issue. And that is a design/coding issue issue. Not because my if require {} or :\n\t
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
While I don't agree with everthing said here, a lecture by Dennis Plauger, author of a book, "Software Tools" (with Brian W. Kernighan), and at the time, custodian of the C programming language, said that when API's get too big, like in the 10's of thousands and hundreds of thousands of functions (like X windows), You need a different paradigm or language.
API's that have hundreds to thousands of functions available are much easier to use and understand. This was in 1993'ish.
So lets not, "fuck Kernighan and Richie" if they were to invent something today, it would not be C. They only invented C to make kernel programming possible in a higher level language.
Back then, people used to say, "a kernel cannot be written in a high level language", they're way to slow....
K&R said "Bah" to that thinking and yes most all kernels today are written in high level languages.
BTW, when I first started using C in 1979, I was using a Nova Computer, running RDOS (Remember Data General anyone). In RDOS, everything was written in assembly language, yes your text editor was written in assebmly language so when Data General came up with a new computer, they get to rewrite everything from scratch......And that was the norm throughout the industry.
So the vast improvement's brought by K&R, have made lots of what we take for granted today, happen.
So yes, using C now, is a little long in the tooth.......
But I wouldn't want to use java to write an interrupt routine.........
I've used Project + Project Issue Tracking with success.
http://drupal.org/project/project
http://drupal.org/project/project_issue.
Everything else (except Gantt charts) could be created as content pages within the project.
For a more integrated system, I'm a fan of Trac, which is Python, not PHP. The wiki markup linking of Trac is worth it on its own.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
I don't think it's as much a case of people in Myranma not being able to find things using Google, but a case of Google not being able to find Myranma.
I hate printers.
Disclaimer: I am one of the book authors (Angela - hi! :))
I share your feelings about the extent to which many tech books dwell on these basic concepts. I'm like you. I don't need 3 pages telling me how to extract a tarball. I don't need an entire chapter dedicated to how to use various FTP clients to transfer files. I can get a web application installed, that's not the hard part. I want to hurry up get my hands dirty with the tool and start being productive! This is why we chose a completely different approach while authoring Using Drupal.
The book does include Drupal installation instructions, of course, but it's very brief, and it's in the back (Appendix A). Out of your way unless you need it.
What you're asking for seems to be a task-based guide to using Drupal day-to-day. Writing such a guide for general public use is unfortunately basically impossible. This is because Drupal can literally look like *anything*, depending on what modules are enabled and how much customization was done in the design.
This book instead is a task-based guide to *building sites* with Drupal. If Prudence is a "hands-on" learner, she might find it valuable to work through a few of the earlier chapters. There's definitely jargon like nodes, blocks, taxonomy, cck, and views (sorry, but you really can't be very effective in Drupal without having a little bit of familiarity in these). However, instead of these things being described as abstract concepts, she would instead be doing practical things with them, and see how they fit into the overall process by building out several types of websites from scratch.
Not sure if what I described is quite up your/her alley, but it might be worth taking a browse at the local bookstore (or on Safari Books Online) and see if it'd work for you/her.
I'm not kidding. So much of what I used to do for a living is trivial with Drupal. Writing custom modules for our clients is fun again and I never have to worry about mundane every-site stuff like user management, perms, front controller dispatching...you name it; if it's common, Drupal will do it for you. Or a contrib module will.
I started picking up Drupal in late 2005, played and learned for a couple of years, and 2008 was almost entirely Drupal builds. From cookpolitical.com where we worked out serious data handling, to tobaccofreecenter.org in seven languages, to globalnetwork.org with it's graphic-heavy design, I've had a blast working with this system!
Er, I didn't actually mean to trot out portfolio highlights there...but what the hell, those are good examples of what you can do with Drupal (and how to make your Drupal site not look like a Drupal site). This is what happens when someone gets me talking about Drupal. Yay!
Back on-topic: Thanks for the review. I'll definitely be picking up this book. If it's anything like Pro Drupal Development from Apress, it'll pay for itself in the first chapter with some nugget that saves me an hour!
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.