Sam Tresler wrote:
I'm aware we just hit code freeze so this is waaayyyy into the future, but I have a few itches that need to be scratched soon and want to garner feedback (concept needs feedback) on some ideas.
I constantly use and abuse the ability to add regions nearly anywhere in drupal and find it incredibly useful.
That said, The blocks admin section has a few highly infuriating ui issues. Namely.
* You can only assign a block to one region at a time. * Current inability to 'clone' blocks. * Block admin is at block-admin not inline.
I want to start work on some features that would first create a 'blocks available' and a 'Regions Using Blocks' interface at the block admin page - In this manner you could take one block and print it in two separate regions. e.g. printing a menu in the footer and the left sidebar, or printing "Who's online" block on the left sidebar on one page and the right on another.
Second feature: Ability to edit blocks per page. This, I would imagine would take the form of a 'block edit' tab for properly permissioned users. Clicking it would take you to a block configuration page for that URL - you could then specify if you want to wildcard the url per each block (user/*), and set placement for each block. I would envision this as adding form elements for weight, url, roles, user visibility and region per block -or- a jQuery drag and drop feature (or one degrades to the other)
Third feature: Cloning Blocks. When you want a block 'just like this module generates only different' - cloning it would generate the appropriate code in a custom block. This is much less important to me, just wnat to know if others find it useful.
I'm looking very seriously at attempting to deprecate block.module in Drupal 7 and replace it with a verson of Panels 2. Panels 2 has or by then will have almost all of the abilities you've mentioned here, plus a lot more.