The Panels module and more recently the Chaos Tools (Ctools) toolset open up enormous power in using small plugins to accomplish user interface wonders. But it's been a bit of a black art knowing what you can do with a plugin and how to do it. But with a little bit of introduction and some sample code it's not too hard.
We'll cover:
A quick introduction to plugins and where and how they're used
The types of plugins: content types, arguments, contexts, access control and more
The Chaos Tools Suite, known as CTools, is kind of a extra core API library. It includes a number of tools to greatly ease certain functionality. In this lecture, merlinofchaos will describe how to do the following tasks:
Create a multi-step form using the form wizard tool
Create advanced ajax forms using the ajax tool
Create more advanced ajax forms using the modal tool
Make your objects exportable like Views
Use collapsible divs that look nicer than collapsible fieldsets
