[development] Default Theme for Drupal 4.8

[Kieran Lal]

On Mar 7, 2006, at 10:49 PM, Nick Lewis wrote:

> Yesterday morning, Dries informed me of the following plans for 4.8:
> (quote)
> 1. A new default theme that is more slick. We're done with Bluemarine.

Talk to Jeff Robins and Ted Serbinksi.  They are leading an effort to  
build next generation themes called Vancouver and Amsterdam.  Glad to  
see you are talking to Adrian too. Please have this discussion in  
public on the themes list.

> 2. A dashboard module to replace the current main administration  
> page (?q=admin).

As Earl indicated CivicSpace Labs has been working with David Reed to  
modify the the administration module to provide a better user  
experience for Drupal administrators.  The administration module is  
currently included in the latest 0.8.3 release candidates of CivicSpace.

> 3. A reorganization of the administration pages.

We conducted a series of interviews with Drupal administrators in  
english and spanish.  We conducted a number of live usability  
experiments related to new users using Drupal.  We surveyed 877  
Drupal/CivicSpace users and got some surprising results about how  
Drupal is actually used.  The results are available here: http:// 
civicspacelabs.org/home/files/adminsurvey.html.  We need people to  
objectively look at the data and really listen to what users have  
told us in this work.  I am currently working with Bill Fitzgerald  
and Gunnar Langemark to interpret the data and design an  
administration interface that matches what drupal administrators  
actually do and how they work.

The administration module, available in 4.6 and 4.7,  is configurable  
so just like the existing menu and block system you can use configure  
it to your hearts content and even theme it extensively as we are  
currently doing for CivicSpace.

> 4. An install system.

CivicSpace labs has already built an install system for Drupal core,  
to replace the existing CivicSpace installer we have using and  
extending for the last 15 months.  We have a learned a lot about  
installation, environment checking, error messages, the state of  
cheap hosting, and the skills levels of new users who are trying to  
use an installer.   We have also gone out studied other CMS  
installers such as Word Press, and Joomla's installers.  Drupal  
development favors small patches so we are currently breaking up the  
installer into at least three pieces per Neil's request and Dries's  
agreement.

But we need help with the installer. Following Steven Wittens review  
we have been working to improve the error messages for users here:  
http://drupal.org/node/51772

The installer is fully bundled for testing of Drupal core here:  
http://www.kerneltrap.org/jeremy/drupal/installer/.  If you want to  
review the installer issue you can do so here: http://drupal.org/node/ 
48732

The requirement API has been broken out here: http://drupal.org/node/ 
52289 and needs some testing.

Any help on these projects would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
Kieran