drupal usability pipe

Automatic/Generated URL Aliases

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:19:39 -0800

Hi, I'm new here so if I'm posting this in the wrong place, let me know.

I'm accustomed to Wordpress and I find it difficult to deal with Drupal because Wordpress does a lot of the "automatic" work for me so I don't have to. And that's how it should be.

The BIGGEST issue I have right now (after having played with the development version of Drupal 7 the past hour) is the awful URL's. Seriously, they are awful for any serious SEO (even the clean URL's)...so I have to manually add an alias everytime I make a blog post, a page, etc, etc.

What Drupal needs to do is fill the value in, based on a configuration or setting. You could simply add a setting in the section where you can set the clean URL. This would minimize any errors in site organization or errors in forgetting to properly SEOize a new page/entry/etc when created. That's crucial. So crucial that it really is amazing that this isn't already part of Drupal.

I develop websites for people and I absolutely cannot hand a site over to a small business owner that knows nothing about the net & expect them to always set this setting themself everytime they add a page in the future.

For the time being, Wordpress is the CMS I need to set up for people & make themes for. But I see the power of Drupal and I really REALLY want to develop sites using Drupal.... but the average user gets confused or makes mistakes using Drupal after I've handed them a complete site. It's just not practical for business yet.

Usability

"Meta Accessibility" - How to Make Accessibility Features Known to the User

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 04:02:02 -0800

What if your site is perfectly accessible but no one knows about it?

This question came up while working on Accessibility improvements for vertical tabs , together with some first thoughts on this issue.

This has always been the problem with access keys and other kinds of "invisible" (i.a. not Point&Click) navigation.

In Editable Accesskeys and More on Accesskeys Jacques Distler argues that accesskey keyboard shortcuts, to be usable, need to be 1) discoverable and 2) modifiable.

Gez Lemon made that into a Greasemonkey User Script to Manage Access Keys.

I'm wondering how we could provide some of this functionality in Drupal.

Frank

Usability

Configuration page with warnings and labels for safe/unsafe filters

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:09:22 -0800

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

Issue: drupal.org/node/618902

Warnings for unsafe filters on the permissions page

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 04:58:47 -0800

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

Issue: drupal.org/node/618902

Changed path deletes menu entry

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 08:26:11 -0800

We know that Drupal requires that menu entries have actual paths that exist, but that it deletes the menu entry if you change the path is a real problem. I have a client who has now deleted his menus three times because he changed the alias to it. He couldn't figure out what was causing it, and didn't wait to get an answer from me, so kept causing it to happen, because he kept changing the path.

I know that it's too late to ask for things in D7, but I'm curious if this condition still exists. And this experience has motivated me to try and get involved in usability.

Usability

Media Styles

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:02:39 -0800

I'm adding display formatters to the Media module, and could use some feedback.

Basically, I'm taking the work from the Image Styles built into core (which is a port of Imagecache), and building a wrapper around it. A Media Style would be a collection of styles, based on the stream (public://, private://, youtube://, etc) and file mimetype (image/jpeg, image/png, etc.), that would be applied to a specific filefield display (either in the node teaser/page display, or a view field display, or possibly other places, such as inline).

As an example, you might have a 'small-box' Media style that contains a 'medium' image style, a 'preview' youtube style, and an 'inline' pdf style. Thus, if the filefield contained an image, it would display it with the image scaling, a youtube video with a small player, and a pdf would be displayed in an iframe. Undefined streams/mimetypes would fall back to the default file listing.

The module is intended to work stand-alone, with File, Image, and/or Media. Thus, one question I have is if it should be bundled with the Media module, or packaged outside the module. On the one hand, as it can be run w/o Media, it might be useful in other situations. On the other hand, I imagine 98% of Media users would also want this module, so I'm hesitant to create a new external dependency. I've mostly decided to bundle it with the Media module, but am open to new considerations I haven't had yet.

I've included two screen shots. The first screen shot at the top shows current functionality. Clicking on a radio will automatically load a new preview of the selected style (that part's not built yet, but that's the idea).

The second below was the original display for administration. It's now actually using vertical tabs, as with the first, but I'm including it since it gives a large overview (and is what it would look like w/o javascript anyway).

I'm mostly looking for feedback of how the administrative UI could be improved, as well as how to word instructions to the user that won't scare them off. Also, for any other conceptual, architectural, or other comments.

Thanks,
Aaron

(Cross-posted at http://aaronwinborn.com/blogs/aaron/media-styles.)

Attachment	Size
Media Styles administrative mockup	50.82 KB
Media Styles administrative w/ vertical tabs	37.96 KB

Drupal Kata

User

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:04:44 -0800

We would like a "quick" way to change a user's "Status" from "Blocked" to "Active." Right now it takes about 3-4 clicks, and then save the User edit form after selecting the "Active" radio button.

When there are dozens of users, this can be tedious. The website client doesn't want users to be "Active" until after careful review...

User Settings (admin/user/settings)

(Our setting is...)

"Visitors can create accounts but administrator approval is required."

Edit User

Status:

[x] Blocked
[ ] Active

Is there any module that could help us simplify this process, or is there a development route we could take?

Thanks!

Northern California

contexual links variations

nobody@flickr.com (yoroy.com) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:30:01 -0700

yoroy.com has added a photo to the pool:

dashboard4

nobody@flickr.com (yoroy.com) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:26:21 -0700

yoroy.com has added a photo to the pool:

dashboard3.jpeg

nobody@flickr.com (yoroy.com) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:24:56 -0700

yoroy.com has added a photo to the pool:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch

widgetsondashboard

nobody@flickr.com (yoroy.com) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 01:06:19 -0700

yoroy.com has added a photo to the pool:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch

recent content/comments

nobody@flickr.com (yoroy.com) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:05:40 -0700

yoroy.com has added a photo to the pool:

dash2

nobody@flickr.com (yoroy.com) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:44:00 -0700

yoroy.com has added a photo to the pool:

Uploaded with plasq's Skitch

minimal dashboard

nobody@flickr.com (yoroy.com) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 04:38:50 -0700

yoroy.com has added a photo to the pool:

sketches for dashboard widgets showing recent stuff

nobody@flickr.com (yoroy.com) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 19:14:12 -0700

yoroy.com has added a photo to the pool:

Folder icons + labels for external folders/files

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 14:24:08 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

filter-options

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:39:03 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

Project Supervisor | Zun Zone

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 13:43:22 -0700

Zun Zone

Project Supervisor

Employment type:

Contract

Telecommute:

Allowed

This is my second post for a Project Supervisor.

We are looking for a person to act as the Project Supervisor for a large scale project. The Project Supervisor will need to help design, website, estimate requirements, budgets, and manage the construction of the Project. Must have experience with large scale projects and be able to manage several teams.

A 'company' can apply for the Supervisor Position, however, that business probably will not be chosen as a contractor to build any portion of the Project because of the conflict of interest. We are only looking for someone to fill the Project Supervisor Position at this point. If a company wants to apply for the Project Supervisor position (as a company) please contract me.
Thanks,
Patrick
pwriter@zunzone.com

Usability

Project Supervisor | Zun Zone

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 12:57:56 -0700

Zun Zone

Project Supervisor

Employment type:

Contract

Telecommute:

Allowed

We want to hire a Project Supervisor (the Super) to oversee all aspects of construction of our Project. The Super will be responsible for the Projects development, quality and completion on time and on budget.

Project Supervisor Job Description and Duties
We are looking for the Supervisor with experience in large projects; he/she must have superior knowledge of Drupal and database driven sites, and experience managing several Drupal development teams.

The Super will assist Management with the creation of the site plan, project requirement, costs, work flow chart and schedules and time frames.

He/she will help to write the Request for Bids for the various parts of the Project and assist in selecting the winning contractors.

The Super will install Drupal on the server, set-up basic site layout, set up admin and permission for contractors. Set up flow charts (?) to track and manage the work flow and make sure everything is being completed timely. He/she will set-up methods of communicating with contractors, assign tasks, changes, and completion schedules.

If a contractor fails to perform, or is uncooperative the Super will be responsible to replace the contractor with a new contractor. Therefore, the Super will maintain relationships with possible replacement contractors (runners up).

The Super will oversee the documentation of the Project. Internal detailed comments and description of how the site is created and the creation of a Users Manual.

The Super must oversee the installation of Drupal "patches and upgrades" via the drupal.org. He/she must oversee the contribution of any improvements, modules, or application we create back to Drupal community.

Interested persons please contact Patrick Writer pwriter@zunzone.com
Thank you,
Patrick

Usability

sorting-3

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 11:26:27 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

sorting-in-place

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 02:18:10 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

empty-state-list-view

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:05:04 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

empty-state

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:05:02 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

view-thumbnail-sorted

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:18:36 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

Looking for a rating system and contractor

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:16:11 -0700

I am looking for any Drupal community site that has a multi-question rating system. Actually, I’m looking for Contractors who have built Drupal communities with multi-question rating systems.

We want to build a Drupal community where the members rate or evaluate services. Not a simple voting plugin where we can only ask one question, but a series of questions. We need to be able to ask several questions and our members will be able to give a numerical value (1-10) AND have the option to comment on each question.

We want the averages of each question tabulated. And the overall average for all of the questions tabulated. For example:
Question 1: 5
Question 1: 8
Question 1: 8
Question 1: 6
Question 1: 8
Average Total: 7

The averages can be displayed in many different ways, throughout the website.

Somebody, somewhere has already built something like this… how do I find them? I really appreciate any help.
pwriter

Usability

editing-a-file

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:50:58 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

upload-new-files

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:18:45 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

view-thumbnail

nobody@flickr.com (mverbaar) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:28:17 -0700

mverbaar has added a photo to the pool:

Keyboard Navigation - Resources & Best Practices

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 07:40:11 -0700

Resources

Drupal & Accessibility

I found the following three main places on drupal.org with documentation on accessibility:

Theming Guide > Tools, best practices and conventions > Accessibility
Very thorough, contains sections on
- Navigation,
- JavaScript and AJAX, and
- Non-Traditional Navigation as well as
- Ann McMeekin's Designing Accessibility into Themes
Getting Started > Accessibility and Drupal
General information and lots of links to further resources.
Drupal core improvements > Accessibility
Mainly a list of links to accessibility related issues.

Best Practices

Access keys

"More on Accesskeys" - on making accesskeys discoverable and modifiable
Greasemonkey User Script to Manage Access Keys

Open issues

Meta-accessibility - how to make accessibility features known to the user

See (http://drupal.org/node/467296#comment-2271956) for some first thoughts on this issue.

Usability

Settings for content types: per type or big list?

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 02:51:21 -0700

Admin UI question to ponder:

Suppose a module adds a property or setting to content types: it allows you to say "content types X, Y, Z have property foo, or can do a particular thing, or do a thing in this particular way".

When should this be a UI element added to the content type admin page, and when should this be a single list of all content types?

A run-down of examples:
Added to the content type admin page: upload, comment, nodeblock, community_tags, meta tags, nodewords, content_profile
List of types: taxonomy, flag, simplenews

Mark Boulton Design Drupal 7 Project

A critical look at the implementation of Plugin Manager - Underlying issues and possible solutions

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 15:34:45 -0700

I have been harboring some growing concerns about the direction of the plugin manager integration proposals for Drupal core almost since their inception, but have not been able to make an informed opinion on the subject until I had properly reviewed the proposed system on a much deeper scale.

While my impressions of the project and the current implementation are fairly negative, I have aimed to frame my criticisms in a positive constructive manner because I believe that the goals of the project are worthwhile, and that for a large section of users this could be a very flexible and usable solution.

Unfortunately a lot of my concerns have been well founded, and I believe that the implementation of this system needs to be taken in a different direction for it to be able to succeed in its goals, while not negatively affecting projects like Aegir, Open Atrium and many other ‘serious developers’.

These are the underlying problems with the current implementation. Keep in mind, that these aren't necessarily problems with the underlying 'idea' of the system, so they can still be worked around or somewhat resolved by adapting the implementation.

Stability problems

The system as it is implemented now relies on a full Drupal bootstrap, because it is a Drupal module. There are more ways to break a Drupal site than I can even count, but this system automates these problems so that they occur with a much higher frequency.

Updates can break the system and have no way to recover

These issues include, but are not limited to :

Modules can and will conflict with each other
Modules can break the system update page
Only enabled modules can be updated

An example of this I actually ran into while testing this patch is the following :

installed dhtml_menu alpha1 in d7
the module broke the javascript on the site , producing the following popup on every page : [javascript error](http://groups.drupal.org/files/Picture 29_0.png)
when i went to the update page to update the site , the following happened : [broken ftp details form](http://groups.drupal.org/files/Picture 25.png)
when i used the broken form it resulted in the batch api JS not working : [broken update batch page](http://groups.drupal.org/files/Picture 26_0.png)
I went and disabled the module, and found that it would no longer upgrade disabled modules : [disabled modules not upgradeable](http://groups.drupal.org/files/Picture 27.png)

I could literally have used any mechanism to completely break this system, but basically what I am getting at is this should not be a Drupal module.

This system needs to be insulated from all the ways Drupal can break, and still be available if the rest of Drupal isn't. If this is not done, it will cause an explosion in the support requests that are made by users who do not understand Drupal.

This system is not being developed with real data

During my research I struggled to find even a handful of projects that have multiple Drupal 7 releases at this point. I did however find the update_module_test project, but that just illustrates the point that this entire system is being built before we actually have a way to properly test it.

Almost all the other packages I found created side effects ranging from completely blowing away the site to subtle somewhat recoverable issues (such as blowing away my menus and blocks).

We simply can not try to build and finalize this system until the packages it is meant to install have matured. To do otherwise would be putting the cart before the horse.

The current implementation can not be opted out of.

Something that not a lot of people seem to understand is that this system is ONLY really useful for a very specific use case, namely that of the 'end user' installing drupal on shared hosting where they already have ftp available to them.

With this baked so deeply into the update module, it's impossible for people who this system will not work for to disable it. There needs to be an opt-out functionality for this, that can be easily deployed.

The requirements for running this system are in no way universal outside the target audience.

I have been a Drupal developer for many years, and not once have I allowed FTP access to any of the sites I maintain, due to the fact that FTP is inherently insecure and that I simply do not want the site admins messing around with the code on the site. If I were to give out FTP access, it would only be for the files directory of each site.

There is the ssh backpath, but that is even more difficult to roll out as there has never been a stable version of this pecl extension and it is not packaged by most distribution vendors. There
are also some fundamental issues around the security issues surrounding this extension that I will get into later in this document.

I had to go through a lot of trouble to get this system even working to test it. I've never run SSH or FTP servers on my local development environment, because I've never needed them. Why would I ?

This system breaks build management.

This system only really works for occassions when there is one and only one instance of a site. in a real development environment you have the local development instances, the shared development instance, the staging instance and the production instance.

The code running these instances needs to be managed with a revision control system like SVN.

This system completely breaks that model by making each of the systems separately updateable at all times, with no oversight of what the other instances are running and no way to get all this stuff back into a revision control system and actually managed.

With no 'off switch' for this functionality, it will become a hell of a lot harder to follow proper development methodologies and make the lives of 'serious' drupal developers a lot harder.

There's more on this subject I will be going into later in this document, but suffice to say this is rather a big issue for me and others.

The security model is security theater

A big deal has been made about how this system is supposedly more secure than the wordpress implementation, but as it currently exists it is may be more dangerous.

you are entering your credentials in a potentially hostile environment

This is a major major side effect of the functionality being a Drupal module and running in a fully fledged Drupal.

Any XSS exploit allows you to gain access to the uid1 account, will allow you to set up a custom block or something similar that can then simply sit back and wait for the affected user to update their system.

The first thing people do when a security release is announced is update their system, and this allows you to harvest system logins from infected sites, which will have much longer lasting consequences than anything else.

There are many many vectors this can be done through in a full drupal, you could add some js to the javascript cache, you could modify the menu router, you could use FAPI to plug into the functionality and write some files etc. etc. etc. The flexibility of the Drupal API is our own worst enemy for this use case.

The plugin manager system should not be part of the normal Drupal code flow, it needs to be able to depend on a set of KNOWN good files available to it.

It is unsafe by default because of plain text passwords

Even if you set up the SSH2 extension, you are still sending your password via plain text.
We could set up a packet sniffer at drupalcon and get ssh / ftp login for hundreds of sites over that period of time.

To make this actually safe, you would need to set up HTTPS for the site. This is impossible for the main use case, and for the security conscious (who in all honesty would already be using Drush for this), it's simply another thing to manage.

I'm willing to let this slide ONLY because FTP itself sends passwords via plain text, which is a major reason why most security conscious users won't have FTP available for use.

The ssh2 extension is not really safer either

There has never been a stable release of the ss### extension in 5 years, it frequently doesn't even compile with the current stable version of libssh2, the requirements to build it are in no way commonly installed in hosting environments, much less the extension itself as no major OS vendors even package it.

After you go through the entire rigmarole to get the SSH2 extension working, you will still be sending your password via plain text. All the ss### extension will be able to do is encrypt the connection from the web server to the web server itself over the localhost loopback.

It is easier, and simpler to install an FTP daemon and configure it to only accept connections from localhost, and gives you the same conceptual security once you have configured HTTPS for the site.

This extension has no place in Drupal core. It has incredibly complex set up requirements for nearly no benefit.

Web server write-able files are not really that insecure

Firstly, we need to make peace with the fact that Drupal already does write PHP files.
That's how we create the settings.php.

What makes that 'secure' is that we set the permissions correctly after we have written it.
We don't need FTP or SSH2 available just to create the file, and neither do we need to do that for module downloads.

I actually went and looked at how wordpress does it, and their implementation is actually better than our current one.

If your permissions are correct for wordpress to do the filesystem level changes itself, it just works. But if they are not, AND wordpress doesn't have the right permissions to be able to change them ... it uses FTP solely as a mechanism to log into the site and change the permissions so that wordpress IS able to update itself.

Once wordpress is done, it sets the permissions back to a safer level (the same way we do for settings.php).

That system is a lot less complex and probably slightly more secure than the current implementation of this system, as the only thing it does is a chmod.

It doesn't try to write files with a higher permission level than the web server and there's no way to plug in and extend this functionality.

This system is not suitably multi-site aware.

This is a big issue for large implementers, and is a direct consequence of the narrow focus on the use case this system suffers from.

What needs to be understood with this functionality, is that Drupal is has more in common with wordpress MU than wordpress. A lot of the assumptions that wordpress can afford to make do not work for Drupal.

This system is destructive, replacing original packages.

I tested this by creating multiple D6 sites, and placing a module in sites/all/modules.
From one of my test sites, i updated this module and the code went and replaced the
shared instance of this module, instead of placing the module in sites/$site/modules.

What made it even more spectacular, is that the version of this module that was downloaded
broke the system spectacularly, breaking not just the site i upgraded but ALL the other
sites using this module.

Potentially hundreds of copies of modules.

If the system was correctly downloading the modules in sites/$site/modules, it would mean
that every module would be installed possibly hundreds of times in different file system locations for each of the modules.

There is no way that you can sensibly use this system in a multi-site environment.

The ftp credential nightmare

You would need to provide FTP credentials for each of the sites in a manner that they do not have the ability to wipe out each other's files in a manner that this system would understand.

This makes the requirements for using this system much more difficult.

Updates for shared modules

Because this site is running from WITHIN Drupal it has no concept of any of the other sites that
are running on the Drupal stack. What this means is that if it does update a shared module, or do a Drupal core upgrade, it automatically breaks all the other sites on the same code base.

It can break them so badly that you can't even log into the sites to be able to run the updates.

This system needs to be far more intelligent than Drupal is about it's own environment.

This system is too deeply Drupal.org oriented.

This is a side effect of not being able to disable this system, and goes deeper into why this system won't work for a wide variety of use cases.

Only drupal.org sourced packages are managed.

This system is only capable of feeding from Drupal.org. This means that if you developed a custom theme / module for this specific site, this system will not be able to install or update it.

There is currently a mechanism in update module to override the update url in the module .info file, but future plans for this system includes fetching and installing modules for install profiles and the like during install.

This is an issue related to build management, because the build is tested with a certain set of modules and other components. It's very likely that the code that is being automatically downloaded could break your sites in a variety of interesting ways.

But because this system doesn't allow you to easily syndicate your own glue code, it means that your entire build process is for naught.

It is very difficult to provide your own package source.

This is not an issue with the implementation of this system itself, but part of the underlying problem with it being centralized.

Until we had the feature server, the only way to provide a package source was to be running the project module locally, and also be running the cvs scripts and buy into the entire drupal.org packaging and management environment.

Doesn't care about local changes

Another case this will break down is if you needed to patch an upstream package to work with this specific environment. Even if you have contributed the patch back upstream and are working towards getting it included, this system will wipe out your modified files with no easy way to get back to what it should be running.

Even if you had completely valid reasons for needing to modify a module, there is no way to syndicate your modified version to use instead.

There is no mechanism to provide versioned dependencies.

This is as much an issue of Drupal core as any system built on top of it. If you have a glue module for your project that provides a bunch of panels for panels 2.x, there is no way to specify
that you should not just upgrade to panels 3.x when it comes out, blowing away your entire site with no way to recover from it.

How can we fix this ?

The implementation in wordpress works, and it works well, but even in wordpress I was able to find the cracks in their armor.

I fully believe we can implement this system, and implement it better than they have, but we have to accept that our requirements are far more complex than wordpress'.

This is a separate system.

Pure and simple, this can not and should not be a standard Drupal module. For this system to work for drupal it will need to be a completely separate system that is shipped with Drupal and may use some of the Drupal core APIs.

What this entails is that there is a separate 'plugin.php' or similar, that operates with it's own code flow and is never running when Drupal itself is.

The update module could still link into this system if it has been enabled for that site, but for security purposes it should use a different login / session ID , so that exploits on the site won't allow the attacker to gain access to the plugin manager.

Do not bootstrap Drupal fully

Similar to update.php, this system needs to be able to run even if the actual site is not running.
The moment we hit drupal_bootstrap_full, the contrib modules that may possibly be broken will be loaded, and people can start writing exploits for this functionality.

If we choose to use the Drupal API from within this system (and there are reasons we could choose not to), we would likely need to implement another bootstrap phase for Drupal,
namely something like DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_CORE, which only loads the files we know we can depend on.

From the perspective of major drupal version upgrades, it would be better if this system did not actually rely on the underlying Drupal API to function, as that would mean a broken core upgrade could still be fixed from within this system as it will still be functional.

Get rid of the false security

The code already in core is incredibly complex and actually counter productive. Even if we decide not to go the web writable route (which is a lot simpler, requires a lot less code and is very likely equally or more secure), then we should still get rid of the ss### extension.

Use a web writable 'overlay' search path

One of the things that I noticed from the wordpress implementation, is that unlike Drupal it only stores the modules it downloads in a single path that needs to be made writable namely the wp-content directory.

For all cases other than a core system upgrade, I believe it is sensible to have the downloaded code be stored in a new contrib/ top level directory, that mirrors the currently used directory search paths as implemented in : api.drupal.org/api/function/drupal_system_listing/7

This would involve a small loop which just prefixes 'contrib/' to the search paths, and avoids a lot of build management issues WHILE providing a simple way to roll back to the original code base.

Provide a simple killswitch for the entire system

A large majority of current Drupal users will not be able to use this system due to the points i mentioned above, so in that sense it should be possible to touch a file or something similar to stop the update links from being generated and so-forth.

Default site only login would also partially accomplish this, because if there is no sites/default this system will be silently disabled as there is no way to log into it.

A kill switch is a very simple way to fix the fact that this system breaks build management, proper development methodology and is far too drupal.org oriented while still making the very useful functionality available to users who can make use of it.

This system is meta-drupal

We need to accept the fact this system needs to know more about the Drupal installation than Drupal itself does. It needs to be aware of which sites are on the system and which modules they are using.

The way I envision it, there will be a single instance of this system for the entire Drupal installation.

To mitigate the issues in a multi-site environment we could enforce that only the uid of sites/default has access to this system, and that when this system operates it will take
all the other sites offline while it runs the necessary updates on them.

Another possible option is to manage the permissions to this system separately, in a sqlite database, which will be a convenient way to store the overarching list of packages on the entire system vs what's available and make sure that it's available even when the database isn't.

Make an exception on code freeze for this system

After playing with this system, I've come to the conclusion that it is going to be very difficult to do an iterative development process on it until we have a good set of actual data to use with it.

If we do choose to develop this as a separate system that is shipped with Drupal, I feel that it would be prudent to allow this system to be implemented primarily during code freeze.

This would allow us time to get it implemented correctly, and would allow us to build on the D7DX work going on in the community. As more packages become available for testing we can automate upgrades and migrations between various versions of these packages and fully kick the tyres.

The potential for this system is huge, but we need to make sure we implement it right.

Other things we can do ..

There are some issues I haven't touched on in these suggestions, but once we have the basics right we can talk about things such as solving the 'many copies of the same module' and other issues.

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Packaging & Deployment

drupalredesign: excited to see the launch of #d7cx - Drupal 7 Contrib experience: getting the top 40 contrib modules D7 ready! http://cyrve.com/d7cx

drupalredesign — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:43:16 -0700

drupalredesign: excited to see the launch of #d7cx - Drupal 7 Contrib experience: getting the top 40 contrib modules D7 ready! http://cyrve.com/d7cx

drupalredesign: check out @jeffnoyes' proposals for #d7ux shortcuts: http://blip.tv/file/2304921 and appearance/themes section: http://blip.tv/file/2290150

drupalredesign — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:30:07 -0700

drupalredesign: check out @jeffnoyes' proposals for #d7ux shortcuts: http://blip.tv/file/2304921 and appearance/themes section: http://blip.tv/file/2290150

drupalredesign: D7UX Information Architecture - A detailed view: http://bit.ly/D136E

drupalredesign — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:24:04 -0700

drupalredesign: D7UX Information Architecture - A detailed view: http://bit.ly/D136E

drupalredesign: D7UX Information Architecture Strategies: http://bit.ly/k6Xs1

drupalredesign — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:20:50 -0700

drupalredesign: D7UX Information Architecture Strategies: http://bit.ly/k6Xs1

drupalredesign: Understanding the D7UX Information Architecture Approach (with thanks to @royscholten) http://bit.ly/1Yce76

drupalredesign — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:19:10 -0700

drupalredesign: Understanding the D7UX Information Architecture Approach (with thanks to @royscholten) http://bit.ly/1Yce76

drupalredesign: 5 microprojects launched today and more to come soon! http://bit.ly/PqobG #d7ux

drupalredesign — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 09:09:50 -0700

drupalredesign: 5 microprojects launched today and more to come soon! http://bit.ly/PqobG #d7ux

Structure 2

leisareichelt — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:07:54 -0700

The Site Builder tool evolves, now with added simplicity ... Drupal Drupal7UX D7UX UserExperience

drupalredesign: Take our Common Site & Content Type Survey for #d7ux - it's quick and open to anyone who builds/designs/manages websites http://bit.ly/4cndt

drupalredesign — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:18:15 -0700

drupalredesign: Take our Common Site & Content Type Survey for #d7ux - it's quick and open to anyone who builds/designs/manages websites http://bit.ly/4cndt

drupalredesign: The best possible thing you could do this Sunday - participate in Structure Summit Sunday http://bit.ly/sHKBD #d7ux

drupalredesign — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 03:46:15 -0700

drupalredesign: The best possible thing you could do this Sunday - participate in Structure Summit Sunday http://bit.ly/sHKBD #d7ux

drupalredesign: Roles & the Admin Header, proposing a new default role - 'member' #d7ux http://bit.ly/8LcZq

drupalredesign — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 02:31:54 -0700

drupalredesign: Roles & the Admin Header, proposing a new default role - 'member' #d7ux http://bit.ly/8LcZq

Our goal is to drastically improve the user experience of Drupal 7. We'd like you to get involved.

Wed, 27 May 2009 06:31:25 -0700

Welcome, how nice of you to drop by! Post a comment, say hi, see who else is about. Let us know what you'd like to do here so we can help you do it!

Get started with Drupal 7 UX

D7UX microprojects! It's the new thing especially for you to get involved in Drupal 7 UX design.
D7 UX project framework
UX issue queue proposed changes to Drupal that need your review
Say hi in IRC, #drupal-usability on freenode.net

There is quite a lot of work that needs doing and many ways you can contribute. It's challenging, fun and not as scary as you might think! Also, it will give you valuable experience in working the open source process and maybe even that warm fuzzy feeling of getting your contribution committed to the actual Drupal software.

People to look for and where to find them

bojhan, yoroy and webchick are some of the names you want to look for if you have questions about all of this. The team is certainly bigger than that but these folks generally know what's up. Feel free to contact them. The easiest way to find us is to join the Drupal group chats on IRC. We're in #drupal-usability on irc.freenode.net, here's the info on how to get on there and here's even more

But yeah, start with saying hi in the comments! :-)

Usability

drupalredesign: Drupal developers - got a module that could do with some User Interface expertise? Nominate it for a #D7UX Microproject http://bit.ly/pz1OV

drupalredesign — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:47:54 -0700

drupalredesign: Drupal developers - got a module that could do with some User Interface expertise? Nominate it for a #D7UX Microproject http://bit.ly/pz1OV

drupalredesign: User Experience People - Want to dip your toe in Open Source Design? Try a D7UX Microproject http://www.d7ux.org/microprojects/ #d7ux

drupalredesign — Wed, 27 May 2009 01:47:32 -0700

drupalredesign: User Experience People - Want to dip your toe in Open Source Design? Try a D7UX Microproject http://www.d7ux.org/microprojects/ #d7ux

D7UX_Structure

leisareichelt — Thu, 21 May 2009 13:41:20 -0700

Current thinking on how the 'Structure' section might work - starting to fill in the details! ... Drupal Drupal7UX D7UX UserExperience

drupalredesign: question: what's the average no. of content types in your Drupal built site? http://bit.ly/1YmyT #d7ux

drupalredesign — Tue, 19 May 2009 10:05:58 -0700

drupalredesign: question: what's the average no. of content types in your Drupal built site? http://bit.ly/1YmyT #d7ux

drupalredesign: who is D7UX designed for? http://www.d7ux.org/who-is-d7ux-for/

drupalredesign — Tue, 19 May 2009 03:08:06 -0700

drupalredesign: who is D7UX designed for? http://www.d7ux.org/who-is-d7ux-for/

UX issue queue sprint June 27/28 in Utrecht

Sun, 17 May 2009 05:43:58 -0700

Start:

2009-06-27 (All day) - 2009-06-28 (All day) UTC

Organizers:

eigentor

Sutharsan

skilip

yoroy

Bojhan

The sprint will be held at One Shoe http://www.oneshoe.nl/ in downtown utrecht which is one of the largest Drupal developing companies in holland. We have space for 20+ people in their nice and spacious office. Utrecht has lots of opportunities to go out in the evening, and with the Drupal Jam on Friday, this is bound to rock for all attendants.

Starting time will be at 10:00 in the morning on both days.

All people that care for UX are welcome. We can use: Graphic Designers, Coders, Copy Writers, Themers and CSS Ninjas

Confirmed Participants so far:

Leisa Reichelt
Mark Boulton
Dries Buytaert
Gabor Hojtsy (Gábor Hojtsy)
Damien Tournoud (DamZ)
Erik Stielstra (sutharsan)
Bojhan Somers (bojhan)
Roy Scholten (yoroy)
Bart Feenstra (Xano)
Gaele Strootman (gaele)
Kristjan Jansen (kika)
Thomas Moseler (eigentor)
Konstantin Kaefer (kkaefer)
Philip Vergunst (skilip)
Willem Mol (Whatdoesitwant)
Berend de Boer (berend)
Maarten Verbaarschot (mverbaar)
Johannes Haseitl (derhasi)
Steve De Jonghe (seutje)
Clemens Tolboom (clemens.tolboom)
Thijs Zoon (teezee)
Floris Derksen
Nasir Barday
Marieke Van Den Berg (Dalticom)
Baris Wanschers (Baris Wanschers)

We have reached 17 Attendees now. So the open Signup is closed for now. If you still want to take part send me a mail so we'll see if we fit you in. And those who are not on location: Join us online

We are currently looking for Sponsors to get some european Core Devs to Utrecht. If you own a Drupal-Shop or just want to contribute to the improvement of Drupal UX: Sponsor a Developer (Travel and Hotel expenses) We will credit you by placing of logo and backlinks, as well as placing your logo on posters on the sprint and putting promotional materials you send us in exposed places.

drupalredesign: Drupalers - how do you use Taxonomy? How do you usually create content categories in your Drupal sites? http://tinyurl.com/pugxpg #d7ux

drupalredesign — Thu, 14 May 2009 04:53:24 -0700

drupalredesign: Drupalers - how do you use Taxonomy? How do you usually create content categories in your Drupal sites? http://tinyurl.com/pugxpg #d7ux

D7UX & Accessibility - Introducing Ann McMeekin

leisareichelt — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:23:00 -0700

... d7ux drupal7ux "Ann McMeekin" pixeldiva d7ux_14_0

drupalredesign: @markboulton & @pixeldiva talk accessibility & #d7ux http://www.d7ux.org/accessibility/

drupalredesign — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:59:07 -0700

drupalredesign: @markboulton & @pixeldiva talk accessibility & #d7ux http://www.d7ux.org/accessibility/

drupalredesign: D7UX Update - people have been asking what we've been up to, so here's a little update: http://www.d7ux.org/update_13may/

drupalredesign — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:42:56 -0700

drupalredesign: D7UX Update - people have been asking what we've been up to, so here's a little update: http://www.d7ux.org/update_13may/

drupalredesign: D7UX & Accessibility - what are your big questions, concerns, suggestions for what we need to look at. Tell us here: d7ux.org/accessibility

drupalredesign — Mon, 11 May 2009 08:32:27 -0700

drupalredesign: D7UX & Accessibility - what are your big questions, concerns, suggestions for what we need to look at. Tell us here: d7ux.org/accessibility

drupalredesign: help pls? what do you think are the top three tasks for these user roles? http://bit.ly/w6X5p #d7ux

drupalredesign — Wed, 06 May 2009 03:14:03 -0700

drupalredesign: help pls? what do you think are the top three tasks for these user roles? http://bit.ly/w6X5p #d7ux

Remove warning modal dialogs and replace them with undo

Tue, 05 May 2009 02:44:37 -0700

I think we can remove modal dialogs and replace it with a "undo" or trash system. Specially when you delete something (node, menu, bloc, etc).

They have a great article about that at listapart See http://www.alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning/

Gmail have this kind of undo and recently add "undo send" http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/new-in-labs-undo-send.html .

Exemple

http://www.svennerberg.com/2008/07/no-undo-redo/

Some issues about modal dialogs

"Popbox (Popups Lite): Adding Modal Dialogs to Confirmations" http://drupal.org/node/374646
"Warn before losing changes (eg: blocks and menu admin pages)" http://drupal.org/node/193799
"Popups: Adding the core modal dialog API" http://drupal.org/node/218820

Some related features request

Drupal gets a trashbin, and other delete goodies! http://drupal.org/node/35422
Deletion API for core http://drupal.org/node/147723

Mark Boulton Design Drupal 7 Project

Paper based walk through of Structure & Navigation tool

leisareichelt — Sat, 02 May 2009 01:50:04 -0700

a walkthrough of how we've been imagining the direct manipulation tool to work using a paper prototype ... D7UX Drupal7UX Drupal "User Experience" Prototype #d7ux_6_0

Design Workshop with MBD & Acquia in London

leisareichelt — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:35:53 -0700

a tiny snippet of our two day workshop with Jeff and Jason from Acquia and Dries ... D7UX Drupal Drupal7ux "User Experience" #d7ux_6_0

drupalredesign: A review of D7UX brainstorming in London last week (thanks @jeffnoyes) http://tinyurl.com/c8febv #d7ux

drupalredesign — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:22:54 -0700

drupalredesign: A review of D7UX brainstorming in London last week (thanks @jeffnoyes) http://tinyurl.com/c8febv #d7ux

on installing and theming

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:13:28 -0700

hey all,

I've (not so) recently published two videos on how I intend to make D7 easier on the newbies.

I focus on two key aspects: getting Drupal up and running and making Drupal look like your own.

though they have been viewed a few times now - and tagged accordingly, I hope - it had slipped my mind to divulge them here ¬¬

I hope this post helps foster some much-needed discussion on my wireframes. I mean, it's not that I didn't show mom and she thought they looked nice, but I need some unbiased, professional second opinions. LOL

so here's the links:
D7 install script - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkRKoKdWf3o
D7 theme builder - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6F6CLkamoU

lemme know what you think, alright?

cheers,
Luciano

Mark Boulton Design Drupal 7 Project

staff

EclipseGc2 — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 17:59:18 -0700

A second example of improving drupal's admin for contextual interfaces. ... drupal7ux

drupalredesign: if you're following the #drupal7ux tag you might want to switch to #d7ux - seems to have evolved as the preferred tag. Sorry about that!

drupalredesign — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 01:06:35 -0700

drupalredesign: if you're following the #drupal7ux tag you might want to switch to #d7ux - seems to have evolved as the preferred tag. Sorry about that!

D7UX Theme Builder

lucoweb — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 22:39:10 -0700

theming Drupal is not hard - when you know your way around HTML, CSS and Drupal itself. if you don't, it can be a pain, so here's some painkiller ;) contact me with any questions at either drupal.org or luco.net.br . ... #d7ux_9_2 usability "user experience" "drupal 7" ux "interface design"

D7UX install script

lucoweb — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:29:31 -0700

the Drupal UX begins when you download and install it. so here's a few thoughts on the process. hope you like them. contact me with any questions at either drupal.org or luco.net.br . ... #d7ux_13_0 usability "user experience" "drupal 7" ux "interface design"

News

EclipseGc2 — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 23:20:07 -0700

An attempt at making Drupal's administrative interfaces a bit more intuitive on a feature by feature (module) basis. This attempts to take views, content types, and taxonomy vocabulary and make the necessary components easily accessible from a single intuitive interface as they pertain to the module at hand. ... drupal7ux Drupal

Drupal Design Camp Boston on June 13-14, 2009

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:05:04 -0700

Start:

2009-06-13 (All day) - 2009-06-14 (All day) America/New_York

Organizers:

Susan MacPhee

mfer

christefano

Regional conference

Drupal Design Camp Boston is a free, two-day Drupal conference on June 13-14, 2009, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is being organized by members of the Boston Drupal group as part of the growing Design 4 Drupal initiative that launched when designers and themers took DrupalCon DC by storm this past March.

This camp also coincides with the drupal.org redesign sprint at the MIT Media Lab on Friday, June 12. The sprint picks up where the San Francisco redesign sprint left off and participants at the Boston sprint will be learning how to contribute to theming drupal.org as well as implement the redesign.

The Design 4 Drupal movement

Translating a design into a Drupal theme is often a high barrier and it has been difficult and costly for many designers to have a "design-driven approach" to Drupal. Feedback from the design community has often focused on the difficulties of designing for the Drupal theme system, and the Design 4 Drupal movement is instead built around the sharing of ideas, techniques, implementations and practices. At its core, Design 4 Drupal is about inviting the larger design community together to be a part of the Drupal community and enabling designers and themers to coordinate efforts, come up with crazy ideas and build a movement to make Drupal beautiful.

The Drupal Design Camp in Boston is the first conference to bring designers, themers, information architects and usability engineers together since DrupalCon DC. There will be many sessions and presentations about topics from grid design and sustainable theming to usability testing and clean, additive approaches to theming, all geared toward helping make Drupal more friendly and approachable.

Location details for Drupal Design Camp Boston

The camp will take place at the Stata Center on the MIT campus, which is known not only for its bold and whimsical architecture (and that it's MIT's largest lab and home to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), CSAIL and other prestigious labs and organizations) but that it was the location of the successful DrupalCon Boston 2008 code sprint.

We are ever grateful to our friends at MIT for hosting the event.

Sponsors and individual contributors

Thanks to our generous sponsors and help from individual contributors, Drupal Design Camp Boston is a free event. It is, however, organized entirely by volunteers and there are costs involved in running the conference, from organizing food and printing schedules to providing services to the deaf and hearing-impaired members of our community.

Sponsorships are immensely appreciated and all contributions go directly towards funding conference operation costs. Any funds not used for the camp will donated to the the Drupal Association for other events and infrastructure, promotion and distribution needs. Thank you!

Ready to sign up?

To learn more about the camp or to submit sessions, become a sponsor and otherwise help make the camp a success, please sign up at the Drupal Design Camp Boston website. Signing up and attending is free and we're working to accommodate presenters and attendees who want to participate remotely.

Before and during the camp, we invite you to join us on IRC in the #drupal-boston channel, follow us on Twitter (we ask that you if you use hashtag, please use #d4d -- thanks!) and check out our news section. We'll see you at the camp!

TNT Themes

Drupal "rejection" of containment and usability issues

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 05:41:29 -0700

Drupal seems to not really like the notion of containment.
While I appreciate the "sea of node" approach as a base view on content that is structured by taxonomy, I think drupal carries it way too far.
And it means that with containment Drupal reject Context.
And a lots of usability issues stems from that.
A few come to my mind (and I am sure there is many more):
* Where did my content go ?,
* What can I add there ? (What can I do next)
* How do I start something
* My content appears in incontrollable place

I will try to illustrate my point with an example :

Let's take the book module for instance, because the book module as been designed to allow exactly such hierarchical structuring and the hoops you have to jump through to use it are a clear indication of what is wrong ;

To create a book you have to

1) Create a book aware content (better know what it is beforehand, not intuitive)
2) Come back to it (Where did it go ? ) and go to the structure tab
3) Select : create a NEW book (and good luck to you if you have already 100 books that populate the "book" box, how confusing can it be for a user ?)
4) Your content become the "preface" of the book (not the cover ;) )
5) THEN add new Child pages to the book (but only 9 levels depth ? why ? )
6) But you can't add Sibling pages .... :(
7) The pages you add will appear as free "leaves" in the content, for instance on the front page if your page type is of the "published on front page by defaut" kind, and above / before their "parent" page since they have been produced after it ....

This obviously IS NOT how a user would think about it
(Heck even I still find this awkward and can't imagine a way to explain it properly)

A user (and me ;) ) would like to:

1) Create a book (and this page would be the cover, to it would be attached properties likes page numbering, outline, thesaurus or global taxonomy, restricted content type allowed inside, etc...)
2) Add pages and chapters INSIDE the book of the type allowed by the book
3) On each page 3 buttons : Add page, Add chapter, Add sub-chapter (same level, a new sibling level of the parent level , a new sub level of the current level)

On the book parameter properties you could say if you want the book to publish its pages or only its cover an if you want the book "freshness" to be determined by pages being added or modfiied, who can change the cover, the properties and administrate chapters and pages ...

It would be so much more usable and "intuitive" for user don't we agree ?

BUT

This means that somehow a real concept of containment must be introduced somewhere...

It already made some appearance in the forum module anyway so maybe it is time for a generalized concept of node container or containment.

Maybe it is the role of an enhanced taxonomy, keeping structure and content separate could be a good and, it seems to me, drupalish idea. (Much better than a node of "type" container, containment would be attached by having a Container/ Structural type of taxonomy attached to any content type, obviously the root instance of a content type)

It means we need to had a generalized concept of properties to taxonomy terms and hierarchy but that would be a boon for many usages of taxonomy ....

Then we could provide a few "structural" taxonomy with semantic meaning (Book, discussion, forum, gallery, thesis, ....) and the relevant properties and behaviors linked to related content types (at least root content type), at least as a sample and starter kit.... letting CCK and people imagination mix and match content types and structural type and behaviors...

And then lots of other "how do you do that" problem could be solved by using rich metaphors that have more meaning for users and more guidance in usage (I can add page to a book but not a book or a forum to a book for instance, or maybe yes if it is an Enhanced Drupal Book ... depends but it is clear in the type definition) ...

And further more we could at last let go away the permission "by content type" stuff, that really does not cut it for any site with a moderately structured audience ...

No more "group" box in a group post box because I would be able to publish INSIDE a group
No More Input format box everywhere (or nowhere with some modules) but on a group by group, book by book, whatever by whatever basis

etc etc ...

Does it sounds stupid ?

Thanks a lot for your time.

Mark Boulton Design Drupal 7 Project

D7UX - Initial Concepts & Direction

leisareichelt — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 04:06:22 -0700

Here's where we're thinking of heading with the proposed User Interface for D7. We'd love to hear your thoughts. ... Drupal Drupal7UX D7UX UserExperience

D7UX Design Principles

leisareichelt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:58:54 -0700

Over the past couple of weeks we've put together six guidelines that we plan to follow as we move through the design process for D7UX. ... d7ux drupal7ux drupal design

D7UX Process

leisareichelt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:24:41 -0700

An overview of the D7UX Process - where we're at, where we're going and why. ... Drupal Drupal7UX D7UX UserExperience

CrowdsourcingUsabilityTesting_Rnd1_RC_Part2

leisareichelt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 07:01:58 -0700

Farez (a Drupal developer) takes a look at our concept header ... drupal d7ux drupal7ux usability crowdsourcingusabilitytes

CrowdsourcingUsabilityTesting_Rnd1_RC_Part1

leisareichelt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 05:50:03 -0700

CrowdsourcingUsabilityTesting_Rnd1_RC ... drupal drupal7ux d7ux usability crowdsourceusabilitytesti

CrowdsourceUsabilityTesting_Rnd1_FR

leisareichelt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 04:52:14 -0700

Farez (a Drupal developer) takes a look at our concept header ... drupal usability d7ux drupal7ux crowdsourceusabilitytesti

D7UX_CrowdSourceUsabilityTestingRnd1_SC

leisareichelt — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:49:44 -0700

Suw (an experienced user of all kinds of content management systems) takes a look at our concept header ... drupal usability d7ux drupal7ux crowdsourceusabilitytesti

Default install profile: Minesota Profile

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 23:04:34 -0700

This wiki page evolved from the expanded default install profile page. If you have your own description of what Drupal should be out of the box, please add a link to that wiki page. Please also use a format similar to the one described here, it will make it easier for us to translate directly into an install profile. Please DO make edits / updates directly to this profile if you feel that community in a box is what Drupal should do out of the box.

minesota profile

[ missing: high level description / use cases for this profile - what kind of site does it build? ]

Content Types

Article

comments: yes
published: no
promoted: yes
uploads: yes
revisions: no

Blog

comments: yes
published: yes
promoted: no
uploads: yes
revisions: no

Book (wiki)

comments: no
published: yes
promoted: no
uploads: yes
revisions: yes

Forum

comments: yes
published: yes
promoted: no
uploads: yes
revisions: no

Notes: It will be a (debatable) good idea to make Advanced Forum, at least a minimalistic version of it, part of such package. Many people do not need forum but many need too, and look for VBB, phpBB integration. Adv Forum can show them they can get a forum of equal usabilty and features OOB.

Album

needs refactoring

Insert any album/gallaery/image module here

That allows authenticated users to have at least one individual album
where she/he can upload/edit/delete Image
Attachment, Inline image disabled for authenticated users
Comments by authenticated users enabled

Roles & Permissions

anonymous
* create / edit book

authenticated
* create/edit own forum posts
* create/edit own blog posts
* create/edit own article posts (can't publish)

contributor

editor
* create/edit/delete page
* create/edit/delete all forum posts
* delete any book
* edit/delete any blog post
* create/edit/publish any article

Enabled Modules

Forum
Blog
Blog API
Upload
Image Field (or whatever core is going to be called)
Taxonomy
Comment
[ in progress ]

**Below needs refactoring***

Profile

What should the profile ideally be?
The way other scripts and actual sites are making profile it seems that
now or after few years more and after few more "usabilty and redesign" tests
one has to agree that Profile should look more like Advanced Profile (APK)
If not anything else - Profile should provide:
Link to add that person to friend/favorit list, whatever
More importantly, link to block that person including pms
Comments on profile with privacy options

and others like .........

Polls, Calendar, Events

Should this be OOB or not ?

Wysiwyg editors

I personally prefer BUI editor but there seems to be great demand for
other fuller stuffs

useful sublinks to a node

and modules needed for these, should they be OOB?
Probably no, many will say. But real usabilty by actual end users or site visitors can be increased
if there are options already enabled below each node to
add it to favorit | send to a friend | print it

Mark Boulton Design Drupal 7 Project

Default install profile: Community in a Box

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 22:59:45 -0700

Community in a Box

A community site with front page articles, a community blogging section, discussion forums, and shared image galleries.

Anyone is welcome to sign up for an account and participate in the forums. After some time in the forums, users are invited to become contributors, and can post blog posts and photos, as well as submit unpublished articles.

The blogging functionality is a community multi user blog. It is not meant as one users blog, but rather a large community that can post quick thoughts responding to each other and sharing their ideas. (Note: this is in here because people get confused about "blog" functionality -- this is meant to highlight that having a community blog is not the same as a single user blog, so don't expect to be able to change titles and designs etc. -- your blog posts are in a shared, community space)

Editors are around and police the forums, as well as reviewing and publishing articles and other material for the front page.

The photo galleries are shared galleries: like the forum and the community blogs, users upload them to share, rather than in their own space. There are weekly suggestions for new gallery categories, and users can also tag photos with whatever they like to mix and match how the photos are grouped.

Wizard Options

Do you want forums? yes/no
Do you want a community blog for contributors? yes/no
Do you want a community photo gallery? yes/no

Content Types

Forum

comments: enabled
published: yes
promoted: no
uploads: yes
revisions: no

Blog

comments: enabled
published: yes
promoted: no
uploads: yes
revisions: no

Article

comments: enabled
published: no
promoted: yes
uploads: yes
revisions: yes

extra field: image

extra field: subtitle

Photo

comments: enabled
published: yes
promoted: no
uploads: no
revisions: no

extra field: image

Roles & Permissions

anonymous

post comments

authenticated

post forum posts

contributor

post blogs
post photos
posts unpublished articles

editor

reviews / edits / publishes articles
posts pages (rarely)

Home - /node: promoted content, which is mainly articles out of the box; displays ~5 articles on the front page
Blogs - /blog: home page of blog module, all community blog posts in reverse chronological
Forums - /forum: landing page of forums
Photos - /photos: latest photos (NEW - needs issue filed)
Archive - /archive: all posted articles (NEW - needs issue filed) (BM: not sure about this -- maybe ALL content ever posted?)

Secondary

About - /about
Contact - /contact

Enabled Modules

All enabled modules, with notes on config not covered above.

Blog
Blog API: enabled for "blog" content type
Color
Comment
Contact
Database logging
Forum
Help
Menu
OpenID
Path
Ping
Profile: hopefully an evolved fields-attached-to-user-object rather than current profile. Needs notes on default user info.
Search
Statistics
Taxonomy
Tracker
Update status: check box on final install review screen, prompts to specifically disable

Mark Boulton Design Drupal 7 Project

If you really want to kick down some doors...

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:54:06 -0700

Make Drupal Object Oriented -- or at least give us that option. Drupal is so close to OOP, why not take the next step? Give us the ability to create an object for a node, give it basic CRUD methods from an interface, and allow it to render as an array for backwards compatibility (and see if you can use the iterator interface for some hybridization).

On this track, an integration with an existing ActiveRecord implementation (I'm a fan of Zend, but Doctrine or Propel(the DBA system for Symfony) has traction as well.

Again -- I'm not insisting that these be made the ONLY functionality inside Drupal -- but an OOP Flavor/branch would go a long way towards making the architecture more standard and in many ways easier for people from other backgrounds to read and develop in. I don't doubt that it might have impact on the performance -- though its anyones' guess which way it would go. Lastly it would remove a blizzard of functions from the global namespace making Drupal a lot less hazardous to integrate with other third party systems that litter the global namespace...

Too much work? Perhaps -- but it would be a long needed step into the 21st century. And please, don't respond with whiny bleats about "Legacy" and "Existing Modules" and "workload". I'm fully aware of those considerations as are everyone else in this forum: don't choke the space with information that everyone already knows. I would just remind you that the Mambo/Joomla crowd uses this argument to maintain their quirky and incomprehensible architecture too; I'm not saying that Drupal is anywhere close to the level of suck that Joomla has achieved but inertia is not a virtue. If you wish to detract, explain why an OOP architecture would be worse than the current quasi-OOP function based architecture, not how hard it would be to do or sell.

Mark Boulton Design Drupal 7 Project

Drupal 7 Install - Making content and navigation

leisareichelt — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 04:16:28 -0700

In which we attempt to publish an article on our new Drupal website ... drupal usability d7ux drupal7ux

Drupal7UX - Tone Of Voice

leisareichelt — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:11:05 -0700

is Drupal a Volvo or a Ferrari? A teacher or an accountant? who is Drupal and how does Drupal speak?

Drupal7 User Experience - WeNeedYou!

leisareichelt — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 04:53:21 -0700

Our biggest risk is rejection.... too late. Come reject us now! Get involved in the Drupal7 User Experience and help us make Drupal 7 something amazing. (see www.d7ux.org for more) ... Drupal Design User Experience Audience Drupal7UX

The Audience Matrix Evolves

leisareichelt — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:37:20 -0700

Check out the changes we've made to the Drupal7 UX Audience Matrix, see how we're applying it to test our ideas and get your very own copy. :) ... Drupal Design User Experience Audience Drupal7UX

Disambiguity Demo of Capellic Drupal Editor UX

CapellicMedia — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:57:48 -0700

Disambiguity Demo of Capellic Drupal Editor UX ... drupal7ux

Drupal7 PimpMyAdmin Gabor Hojtsy 20090304

leisareichelt — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:53:52 -0700

Gabor Hojtsy talks through some change he's made to the Drupal admin, including av cool inline edit tool (annoyingly slow internet but we get there in the end) ... drupal pimpmyadmin drupal7ux

drupal usability pipe

Automatic/Generated URL Aliases

"Meta Accessibility" - How to Make Accessibility Features Known to the User

Configuration page with warnings and labels for safe/unsafe filters

Warnings for unsafe filters on the permissions page

Changed path deletes menu entry

Media Styles

User

User Settings (admin/user/settings)

Edit User

Status:

contexual links variations

dashboard4

dashboard3.jpeg

widgetsondashboard

recent content/comments

dash2

minimal dashboard

sketches for dashboard widgets showing recent stuff

Folder icons + labels for external folders/files

filter-options

Project Supervisor | Zun Zone

Project Supervisor | Zun Zone

sorting-3

sorting-in-place

empty-state-list-view

empty-state

view-thumbnail-sorted

Looking for a rating system and contractor

editing-a-file

upload-new-files

view-thumbnail

Keyboard Navigation - Resources & Best Practices

Resources

Drupal & Accessibility

Books

Online Resources

Tools

Best Practices

Access keys

Open issues

Meta-accessibility - how to make accessibility features known to the user

Settings for content types: per type or big list?

A critical look at the implementation of Plugin Manager - Underlying issues and possible solutions

Stability problems

Updates can break the system and have no way to recover

This system is not being developed with real data

The current implementation can not be opted out of.

The requirements for running this system are in no way universal outside the target audience.

This system breaks build management.

The security model is security theater

you are entering your credentials in a potentially hostile environment

It is unsafe by default because of plain text passwords

The ssh2 extension is not really safer either

Web server write-able files are not really that insecure

This system is not suitably multi-site aware.

This system is destructive, replacing original packages.

Potentially hundreds of copies of modules.

The ftp credential nightmare

Updates for shared modules

This system is too deeply Drupal.org oriented.

Only drupal.org sourced packages are managed.

It is very difficult to provide your own package source.

Doesn't care about local changes

There is no mechanism to provide versioned dependencies.

How can we fix this ?

This is a separate system.

Do not bootstrap Drupal fully

Get rid of the false security

Use a web writable 'overlay' search path

Provide a simple killswitch for the entire system

This system is meta-drupal

Make an exception on code freeze for this system

Other things we can do ..

drupalredesign: excited to see the launch of #d7cx - Drupal 7 Contrib experience: getting the top 40 contrib modules D7 ready! http://cyrve.com/d7cx

drupalredesign: check out @jeffnoyes' proposals for #d7ux shortcuts: http://blip.tv/file/2304921 and appearance/themes section: http://blip.tv/file/2290150

drupalredesign: D7UX Information Architecture - A detailed view: http://bit.ly/D136E

drupalredesign: D7UX Information Architecture Strategies: http://bit.ly/k6Xs1

drupalredesign: Understanding the D7UX Information Architecture Approach (with thanks to @royscholten) http://bit.ly/1Yce76

drupalredesign: 5 microprojects launched today and more to come soon! http://bit.ly/PqobG #d7ux