[drupal-devel] A collection of usability problems

[Larry Garfield]

On Saturday 24 September 2005 03:42 am, Álvaro Ortiz wrote:

> > 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*.

By "physically", I mean both the URL and structurally.  The "admin" portion of 
the site is completely different than the main area.  There are no sidebars 
or blocks.  The footer is different.  There are different hooks in the 
system.  It's blisteringly obvious when someone is in the "admin" part of the 
site in WordPress.  An admin theme there reinforces that.

There is no clearly binary "You're in admin or not" for Drupal, and frankly I 
don't think there needs to be or should be.  An admin-only theme doesn't 
really work unless you have clean separation between admin and non-admin.

And if we're defining admin based on URL patterns only, then you can do that 
now.  The section module lets you throw an arbitrary theme at admin/*, or 
node/*/edit already.  If someone wants an admin theme, that's the way to do 
it.  There's no need for an extra set of features to support it.

-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
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