[development] Early Drupal 6 review from Chris Messina

[Philippe Jadin]

> I'd say both of those statements are true.  Learning curves cannot be
> eliminated, but we should strive to make them as easy to climb as possible.

We could introduce a new concept, beside access rules, this would be
"user knowledge level" or something like that. At installation, we
could ask the user if he is a newbie or an advanced admin or something
in between. Then, the UI could be adapted and some options eliminated
for newbies.

The important point here is the fact that you are talking about a
learning *curve* which means that user knowledge will improve. I don't
think an install profile would be a good solution, because it would
stuck the user with a dumbed down blogging interface. When you decide
to use Drupal for a blog and you are a newbie, it's because you see
that there is a lot of room for extension (and in a very clean way).

If it was possible to hide the complex stuff and make it available at
the change of a user preference, this would ease the job of newbie
admins (those with id = 1)

At the same time advanced users will be happy with the already
available full admin menu.

Some software use this kind of adaptive UI, like Azureus bittorent
client. See first screen here
http://azureus.sourceforge.net/screenshots_v2.php

My 0.02 as usual

Philippe

ps : note that this could be implemented using user roles. A "newbie"
role could be added at install time if requested