[development] Early Drupal 6 review from Chris Messina

[Josh Koenig]

> One thing I've been thinking about is how Firefox
> balances these two items.  There are hundreds (thousands?) of settings
> in firefox (type about:config into your location bar to see many of
> them).  You only see ~10% of them in the menu structure and dialog
> boxes while the rest are hidden in about:config or via files (e.g.
> changing your chrome/*css).  most Firefox users will never use
> about:config or the chrome files.  But for the 5% who use them, they
> are very important!
>
> Can and should we adopt this separation in Drupal?  We already have
> some examples of variables which have no UI in core but can be enabled
> via a contributed module or via settings.php (e.g. dev_query).  Should
> we take this further as a general system?
>
> I'm leaning towards yes, but want to know how other people feel.

I've often fantasized about rolling common features from a custom  
"admin screens" I end up building for clients into a general "Drupal  
Admin Lite" module. Obviously it would be fantastic to get something  
like this into core, but with the vast array of use-cases it seems  
like a ripe opportunity for contrib space to take on.

A product-specific admin interface also makes a lot of sense for an  
install profile. My experience is if you're doing anything  
interesting, you end up with a custom module doing various API tweaks  
and workflow glue for your use-case. Even if you're just rolling a  
"blog" or "wiki" install profile, a key part of making it wildly  
successful will be giving blog/wiki admins quick and intuitive access  
to the tools they need...

-j


------------------------------------------
Josh Koenig, Partner
http://www.chapterthreellc.com
AOL IM: chap3josh
1-888-822-4273