[development] Administration page patch committed

[Earl Miles]

Frando (Franz Heinzmann) wrote:
> Fist of all, great work, Earl!
> 
> Dries Buytaert schrieb:
> 
>> Note that we're well aware that there is room for improvement so feel 
>> free to submit patches that build upon Earl's work.  It's not perfect, 
>> but it is certainly a big step forward.  For example, we could use 
>> some help making the administration page a tad sexier.
> 
> 
> Hmm,
> concerning the look&feel of administration pages:
> 
> I think we should create a new administration theme. The time of 
> bluemarine is - in my eyes - over.

I completely agree. While I don't think a new admin theme will happen 
before the code freeze, I have every belief that a good, sexy, solid 
admin theme *is* doable, and the question is finding the right person to 
design one.

> It's difficult to have a sexy administration page within bluemarine, 
> because bluemarine is not in particular sexy. And this is not about 
> funky-web-2.0-ish-ajaxy-whatever stuff but mainly about usability. 
> Sometimes, Ajax *can* improve usability a lot, sometimes not (therefore 
> it would also be great to get jquery into core, but that's another topic)

Yes. One can do a *lot* just by creating color balance, setting up 
negative space properly, and ensuring everything is positioned in a way 
to make the eyes flow from data point to data point. It improves the 
speed the data is read and it reduces the 'fear factor'.

> Many themes are great themes for viewing a website, but are often not 
> designed to be used with an administrative backend. So I think drupal 
> should *provide* a theme that's just perfect to be uses with the 
> administration center. Site builders can then decide wether they want to 
> use their own theme or administration theme for the admin center or the 
> drupal default administration theme.

> Is it currently possible to "map" a theme to a path (admin theme to 
> admin/*) without using contrib?

Look carefully at the administration page setting in the new admin area. 
It lets you choose the administration theme, which now defaults to 
bluemarine (because it's at least sane).

There is currently nothing in the way of creating a good administration 
theme, and if anybody feels they 1) are a talented designer and 2) can 
write clean HTML/CSS, then now would be a great time to start.

I think a real admin theme will require more patches to core, just to 
make a lot of the administration pages better/more themeable. I'm all 
for that, as I work my way from page to page that I particularly think 
needs love. But I am not a designer so much as trying to improve the 
design AND set up features the way I think they need to be.