Jeremy Epstein schrieb: [snip]
I like the idea of the red "new" markings on newly added menu items. I also have another idea, that takes a slightly different approach to solving the same problem. It is currently best practice for modules to list all of the functionality that they offer, and all of the menu pages for using the functionality, in the 'admin/help' section. Why not take this help text, and make it stand out to the user when a module is first enabled?
For example, the path module is a core module that is disabled by default. We could make it so that when the path module is first enabled, a series of 'messages' are displayed to the administrator on the main 'admin dashboard' page, each message listing a new piece of functionality, and a link to the page where it can be used. See my attached mockup image for an idea of what I'm talking about.
In the mockup image, my vision is that when the user clicks anywhere within the message, they are taken to the page that is being linked to in the message, and the message itself is deleted. The user can also delete the message without following the link, by clicking the 'X' icon in the corner. Of course, this vision would involve a lot of fancy AJAX in practice. If 37Signals were developing the next version of Drupal, I imagine that this is how they'd do it. ;-)
Great idea! One step forward might be this: http://drupal.org/node/73809 Another thing would maybe be to have a link "paths" in the module table for each module. By clicking on it, a collapsed div below the module is decollapsed providing a short (one or two lines) description and a listing of all links where this module is found in the administration area. In other words, I really really do like Earl's approach of reordering the administration center by task grouping. However, sometimes you want e.g. just to disable this one setting of this one module, and then the easiest way for me as an admin would be to go to the modules page, and have the link I'm looking for directly below the module (the div providing the links would by default be collapsed). This would save me lots of clicks = lots of time. It should not be hard to implement either. best regards, Frando
Cheers, Jaza.
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