[development] Early Drupal 6 review from Chris Messina

[Xavier Bestel]

On Mon, 2007-11-12 at 10:37 -0300, Greg Knaddison wrote:
> On Nov 12, 2007 10:13 AM, Xavier Bestel <xavier.bestel at free.fr> wrote:
> > Also Colin, remove the length settings, or make that hidden somewhere.
> > That's a kind of setting I forgot: the "please don't fail" option.
> 
> By Colin I assume you mean Greg ;)

Err .. yes, now I'm confused.
Sorry for that Greg :)

> I was asking for feedback on an idea and providing an example to help
> people understand the idea.

To me, that was a good example where clutter can be trimmed off.
No offense to you Greg, removing options isn't an easy task, but once
it's done it makes life easy for users.

> Earnie responded to the idea and said:
> > I think the variable editor idea is a bit on the dangerous side.  Too
> > prone to errors for the majority of those using it (I want to say 75%
> > but I have no statistics).  While good experienced administrators could
> > benefit from it; the inexperienced may well flood the lists.
> 
> I agree, but the target user of the variable editor is an advanced
> admin.  The goal is to only put options there that are both uncommonly
> changed and useful only to admin users.  It is how Firefox (one of the
> few OSS UI Simplicity success stories) balances this problem.

On one hand it could be a good way of hinding useless but mandatory
settings, but on the other hand care should be taken for that "variables
editor" not to become a dumping ground.

	Xav