06 Dec 2016

SES: Drupal 8, front-end teardown

We’ve just designed and built a new website for the world-leading satellite operator, SES. SES connects and enables broadcast, telecom, corporate and government customers, and enriches the lives of billions of people worldwide.

We’re really proud of how it’s turned out, and as it’s one of the first batch of high-profile large Drupal 8 websites, we’ve been asked by a wide range of people about our technical approach to building a complex site using the latest version of Drupal.

You can read our case study here on the project as a whole, but here is Stuart Wilson, Head of Frontend Development at Catch to explain a little more around our front-end approach:  

“The sheer scale of the SES website demanded a scalable and comprehensive front end system. As a team we approached the transition from design to code by creating a static style guide of individual components which would then be used to power the Drupal 8 website.

Our modular CSS was written in SASS using NPM to run build scripts and wrapping it up with PostCSS’ Autoprefixer for greater resilience to browser inconsistencies. Using BEM syntax and championing an OOCSS approach allowed us to write configurable componentry which was open to extension, but closed to core modification which meant that QA testing could happen earlier on in the build.

“The sheer scale of the SES website demanded a scalable and comprehensive front end system."

STUART WILSON, HEAD OF FRONT END DEVELOPMENT AT CATCH

Thanks to Drupal 8’s use of the Twig templating engine, we could test the flexibility of our HTML templates using mock data which was then swappable for real content from the CMS.  This created a unified theming workflow with clear ownership between the front and back end of the website and helped reduce code overhead whilst instilling scalability within the UI.

Thanks to our modular approach, we were able to utilise Drupal Paragraphs to promote greater flexibility across content types in the CMS, enabling SES to realise any combination of page designs they required.”

Visit www.ses.com and stay tuned for future SES developments. We’re continuing to work with the team in Luxembourg on increased website functionality and a range of other exciting digital products.

09 Feb 2015

Just launched: Cineworld Movie Planner

Ahead of what is set to be a year of unmissable film, Cineworld, the UK’s leading cinema chain, has launched its first-ever Calendar Film Planner - built by Catch! Cinema- goers can download the unmissable films of 2015 straight into their personal calendar, ensuring they never miss a film at the cinema again.

The calendar has been designed to let people know when films are released at the cinema – and serves as a reminder to let them know there is no better way than to watch a film than on the big screen at Cineworld. And with such a stellar line-up of film in place for 2015, it’s a must-have tool for this year.

Furthermore, it can be used on any smartphone, desktop and tablet device across Apple, Android and Windows – and users can synchronise the calendar to their individual iCal, Gmail, Yahoo or Outlook account calendars. Sign-up is completed in four simple steps, with users either subscribing to the calendar via a feed on the Cineworld website or through the Cineworld Facebook page.

And to ensure cinema-goers are only reminded about the films they want to see, users are given the option to select as many or as few films genres as they like. There are up to 12 genres which can be selected; Action, Family, Comedy, Sci-Fi, Thriller, Horror, Drama, Art-house, Musical, Bollywood, Documentary and Event Cinema. There is also the option to de-select certain films from ticked genres, should an individual only want to be reminded about certain titles.

When a film is released at a Cineworld cinema, users will receive a calendar alert or Facebook notification (if they have chosen the option to RSVP via Facebook) to let them know about the release along with the option to book tickets at cineworld.com.

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