[drupal-devel] A collection of usability problems

[Álvaro Ortiz]

> definitely not as the only/standard way of doing it.  Is editing a node 
> administrative?  What if it's your own node?  Someone else's?  Will the theme 
> sometimes change and sometimes not?  How drastically does the theme change?  

I would not discuss if editing a node is administrative, but I think we 
all can agree is that editing a node is something that happens in a not 
public environment - I think this is the criteria that should guide the 
decisions:

* actions that are private happens in a private environment. This way, 
the user is not confused in terms like "anyone can edit this?", always 
knows when he's editing something. Moreover, I would think in making 
into core something like workplace.module: when I user logs into his 
account, he has an overview of all ot its "things" in the system (as 
WordPress or MT or many others "CMSs" do).

* actions that are public, like posting comments, keep in the public area.

Surely we will find actions that are not clear if they are public or 
private. Posting a forum topic is private but its comments are public? 
But its a start an a solid criteria, that, moreover, I think its a 
pattern that shows in many many other tools.


> WordPress, for instance, has all of its administrivia physically separate from 
> the user site, so having a dedicated admin theme makes perfect sense.

What does "physically" mean? An URL change only? Some corporate CMSs 
have the backend and the frontend in two different IPs in two different 
network interfaces (so that the backend one can be in an VPN with secure 
access): that's physically :)

If the URL change is the only concern, I would not worry because the 
user doesn't mind if he's on admin* or *edit*.

cheers,
álvaro

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