[drupal-devel] Code freeze, usability and performance
Hello world, just a quick update on the code freeze. The next few days I'll work my way through the pending patches. CVS will be frozen once I managed to review some of the important patches that are currently pending. I'll try to review patches tonight and during the weekend. As always, you can help review patches. If you do, make sure to review them well. Bad reviews are merely a waste of time. As of Monday, I'd like us to focus on both usability and performance improvements. - Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience. For many people, this is either due to (i) the terminology or (ii) the awkward navigation structure. Many people feel lost and don't know where to start. As such, some people think of Drupal as "too complex" or "different than other systems". In the next few weeks, I want you to investigate how we can continue to improve the Drupal exerpience. - Performance: Drupal being used on bigger and bigger site, performance becomes more and more important. Also, because more and more complex sites are being built, memory usage is often a bottleneck. In the next few weeks, I want you to investigate how we can improve performance and reduce memory usage. Fire up your favorite profiling tool, benchmark scripts, and try to squeeze more out of Drupal. -- Dries Buytaert :: http://www.buytaert.net/
- Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience.
I would like to point out I created a control panel module (Kieran was involved in it) which literally mirrors the menu in the main area and if there are icons in the appropriate place, those are displayed too. To my understanding, next week this will get some themer love. I am well aware of the fact that Mambo was choosen several times because out-of-the-box you saw a few big, colorful icons in the administration area. It's in my sandbox. Maybe core? Too late? Maybe not? Merge with menu.inc? Regards NK Ps. Yes this control panel is just a thin veil and won't solve the real problems. Yet it is pretty.
- Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience.
I would like to point out I created a control panel module (Kieran was involved in it) which literally mirrors the menu in the main area and if there are icons in the appropriate place, those are displayed too. To my understanding, next week this will get some themer love.
I am well aware of the fact that Mambo was choosen several times because out-of-the-box you saw a few big, colorful icons in the administration area.
It's in my sandbox. Maybe core? Too late? Maybe not? Merge with menu.inc?
Not as the default admin menu for 4.7 please :) Goba
On 9/15/05, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:
- Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience.
I would like to point out I created a control panel module (Kieran was involved in it) which literally mirrors the menu in the main area and if there are icons in the appropriate place, those are displayed too. To my understanding, next week this will get some themer love.
I would love to see this. Since the freeze is only for core code changes, excluding usability and performance, I think this could be released with 4.7 as well. Can you please post an issue with code for review? I would love to play around with and offer thoughts and hopefully get this included. And yes, Gabor, a way to turn this on/off if needed we should look into, but after we see the code I say! ted (aka m3avrck)
Maybe it could start as a contributed module. If it is really useful, and gets good reviews, then it can be moved to core after one release cycle. Similar to what happened to image.module. On 9/15/05, Theodore Serbinski <tss24@cornell.edu> wrote:
On 9/15/05, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:
- Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience.
I would like to point out I created a control panel module (Kieran was involved in it) which literally mirrors the menu in the main area and if there are icons in the appropriate place, those are displayed too. To my understanding, next week this will get some themer love.
I would love to see this. Since the freeze is only for core code changes, excluding usability and performance, I think this could be released with 4.7 as well.
Can you please post an issue with code for review? I would love to play around with and offer thoughts and hopefully get this included.
And yes, Gabor, a way to turn this on/off if needed we should look into, but after we see the code I say!
ted (aka m3avrck)
I think it was discussed and that was the conclusion that most said they want. On 9/16/05, Robert Douglass <rob@robshouse.net> wrote:
Khalid B wrote:
Maybe it could start as a contributed module.
If it is really useful, and gets good reviews, then it can be moved to core after one release cycle.
Similar to what happened to image.module.
Did I miss it, is image *finally* in core?
> On 9/15/05, Theodore Serbinski <tss24@cornell.edu> wrote: > >> On 9/15/05, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote: >> >>>> - Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal >>>> relate to >>>> the out-of-the-box experience. >>>> >>> >>> I would like to point out I created a control panel module >>> (Kieran was >>> involved in it) which literally mirrors the menu in the main area >>> and if >>> there are icons in the appropriate place, those are displayed >>> too. To my >>> understanding, next week this will get some themer love. >>> >> >> >> I would love to see this. Since the freeze is only for core code >> changes, excluding usability and performance, I think this could be >> released with 4.7 as well. >> >> Can you please post an issue with code for review? I would love to >> play around with and offer thoughts and hopefully get this included. >> >> And yes, Gabor, a way to turn this on/off if needed we should look >> into, but after we see the code I say! >> >> ted (aka m3avrck) Op 16-sep-2005, om 0:33 heeft Khalid B het volgende geschreven: > Maybe it could start as a contributed module. > > If it is really useful, and gets good reviews, then it can be moved to > core after one release cycle. > > Similar to what happened to image.module. image.module is *still* not in core, besides the fact that it is (one of) the most popular contrib modules we currently have.. I am still for having the image.module in core.. I can remember that we wanted better image handling in core when releasing 4.7, so I encourage Dries to think about this.. Also have a look at the great work 'robrechtj' did on the splitting of the image API/gallery/handling.. - 'robrechtj' Sandbox: http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/ contributions/sandbox/robrechtj/image/ - Walkahs image.module: http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/ contributions/modules/image/ Maybe Walkah can comment on this image-thing, and together with robrechtj? Though I don't know if he is on the devellist. Stefan
Op 16-sep-2005, om 0:19 heeft Theodore Serbinski het volgende geschreven:
On 9/15/05, Karoly Negyesi <karoly@negyesi.net> wrote:
- Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience.
I would like to point out I created a control panel module (Kieran was involved in it) which literally mirrors the menu in the main area and if there are icons in the appropriate place, those are displayed too. To my understanding, next week this will get some themer love.
I would love to see this. Since the freeze is only for core code changes, excluding usability and performance, I think this could be released with 4.7 as well.
Can you please post an issue with code for review? I would love to play around with and offer thoughts and hopefully get this included.
And yes, Gabor, a way to turn this on/off if needed we should look into, but after we see the code I say!
ted (aka m3avrck)
Karoly, maybe you can share some screenshots with us??? Steef
On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Karoly Negyesi wrote:
- Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience.
I would like to point out I created a control panel module (Kieran was involved in it) which literally mirrors the menu in the main area and if there are icons in the appropriate place, those are displayed too. To my understanding, next week this will get some themer love.
I was wondering why you didn't make it a contrib project.
I am well aware of the fact that Mambo was choosen several times because out-of-the-box you saw a few big, colorful icons in the administration area.
I am aware of this too. I don't really care. :p
It's in my sandbox. Maybe core? Too late? Maybe not? Merge with menu.inc?
The code looks a lot like menu.inc, yes. :p I think it is too late to add it to core, but I would appraciate a contrib project made from it. Some default icons would be nice, too. Cheers, Gerhard
Though an improvement, usability of the admin area goes FAR beyond an admin pane with icons. Without a proper foundation, a linked icon does only harm (click, hey, where the hack am i now?). It helps only those that look at drupal the first few hours. After that it is only annoying. and for us,teh developers it is FAR more annoying. But above al that stands teh fact that there are FAR more important usability issues to be dealt with, first. Think unordered localised menu's. Think help texts (of contributions). Think A-New-UI-To-Be-Leared-For-very-Page-In-Drupal aka inconsistency. Think broken admin themes. Etc.etc. Really, we need a STRATEGY above all, much harder than minor tweaks here and there. For that will result in an everlasting tweaking hell. We will then always spend our time fixing up bad UI's instead of doing them right from the beginning. This is very much the case now. both in newly introduced features as in those left overs. Propose to start with a battle plan for 4.8 and leave what we have for now. have. I volunteer as a member of a team of usability developers for 4.8. Ber Op vrijdag 16 september 2005 00:03, schreef Karoly Negyesi:
- Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience.
I would like to point out I created a control panel module (Kieran was involved in it) which literally mirrors the menu in the main area and if there are icons in the appropriate place, those are displayed too. To my understanding, next week this will get some themer love.
I am well aware of the fact that Mambo was choosen several times because out-of-the-box you saw a few big, colorful icons in the administration area.
It's in my sandbox. Maybe core? Too late? Maybe not? Merge with menu.inc?
Regards
NK
Ps. Yes this control panel is just a thin veil and won't solve the real problems. Yet it is pretty. Bèr -- [ Bèr Kessels | Drupal services www.webschuur.com ]
On Sep 15, 2005, at 1:28 PM, Dries Buytaert wrote:
- Usability: one of the most common complaints about Drupal relate to the out-of-the-box experience. For many people, this is either due to (i) the terminology or (ii) the awkward navigation structure. Many people feel lost and don't know where to start. As such, some people think of Drupal as "too complex" or "different than other systems". In the next few weeks, I want you to investigate how we can continue to improve the Drupal exerpience.
Hi, I have spent the last 13 days neck deep in hurricane relief work and I am just starting to come out of it. Here's brief update of what's happened and what needs to be done still. 1) Creation of the control panel module that give a whole page to navigate Drupal administration. We are building icons and card sort will help with administration grouping. Expect prototypes in the near future. 2) Remote usability testing: We have developed and prototyped a remote usability environment. We successfully video and audio captured users reviewing wireframes of Drupal site. We will be doing more of this in the near future. we will be publishing videos via RSS for the community to see the usability problems. 3) Project module is key in providing an evaluation of modules that is a very important component of site administration for site developers. 4) Administration help has been submitted as a patch. We need to review and ensure users have access to help from admin pages for all modules. 5) We created the Wireframe module which allows users to build wireframes from interface components. We hope by providing wireframe support within Drupal that the connection between designers, programmers, and users can be tighter. To understand wireframes: http://www.iawiki.net/WireFrames 6) I have completed about a dozen interviews for Drupal administration user experience. I have to conduct more interview with novice users as all the interviewees were heavy users of Drupal Administration. Those interviews will lead to a broad survey for the community. From the survey we will prioritize the top user experience problems in Drupal and then dedicate resources to improve it. Sorry for the delays, but the improvements will get into Drupal 4.7. Cheers, Kieran Development Manager CivicSpace Labs
participants (10)
-
Bèr Kessels -
Dries Buytaert -
Gabor Hojtsy -
Gerhard Killesreiter -
Karoly Negyesi -
Khalid B -
Kieran Lal -
Robert Douglass -
Stefan -
Theodore Serbinski