In Drupal 6, printing variables in template files was fairly straightforward. But you quickly ran into limitations when wanting to override the innards of a single variable (for example, render some node fields or links in a different region than the rest of the node content). This problem was solved in Drupal 7 with the Render API, but exposed too much complexity that added a large learning curve requirement for anyone needing to make frontend customizations to a Drupal site. For Drupal 8, can we get the best of both worlds: the power to fully customize every element's markup and placement without needing months of PHP and in-depth Drupal training?

Work is underway to try to achieve this. In this session, we'll present the improvements already in core, and the next steps being worked on. You'll find out what you can look forward to in Drupal 8, give feedback on the work in progress to help ensure the work is achieving its goal of designer friendliness, and find out how you can continue to be involved after the session.