[development] Remove top-level admin menu items

[Jose A. Reyero]

I strongly disagree with this proposal because:

(And btw I'm the maintainer of Messaging and Notifications mentioned below)

1. For complex packages, scattered pages around the admin interface 
really make it difficult for users to grasp the whole set of options 
sometimes needed to set them up.

2. The 'per module' option is no replacement for some grouping as this 
is a 'code oriented' concept but not a user friendly one at all. In this 
case, Messaging & Notifications can be a dozen modules, this won't help 
at all.

So, unless we have in D7 some 'Per package' tab for the admin UI, that 
would make more sense from a usability perspective than the 'per module' 
idea, I'm afraid these modules' admin UI will stay the same.

That said, I think guidelines are fine, so if you want to set up this 
one as a guideline and find some consensus, ok. But enforcing guidelines 
upon module maintainers, when they think they have a specific reason to 
skip this one or this other guideline is bad (and mostly a waste of time).

So thanks for the heads up, I appreciate it, but really the reasons to 
keep the admin menu as it is are stated on the issue, which I'm afraid 
will stay as 'won't fix'... It is here, btw, 
http://drupal.org/node/366489 (not that I want to spend more time on 
this one)

Jose

Daniel F. Kudwien wrote:
> This goes out to some maintainers, specifically related to
>
> - Notifications / Messaging
> - Organic Groups
> - Panels
>
> Those and related/dependent modules are implementing top-level menu items, e.g.
>
> - admin/messaging
> - admin/og
> - admin/panels
>
> in the style of Drupal 4.7, instead of using the new administrative categories and structure we have since Drupal 5.x.  This is not only confusing, but also clutters the administrative interface - especially, if Administration menu module is installed.
>
> I see no reason why it needs to be this way.  Clearly, for example, Organic Groups and Panels are both tools to build a Drupal site -- the proper location would thus be below "Site building".
>
> In the special case of Notifications/Messaging, the situation gets even worse: It mixes administrative items for different purposes into one top-level item, meaning that permanent site configuration settings and continuously required administrative functions are located in one, bloated container with no clear distinction.  Furthermore, granting administrative users the permission to administer user subscriptions will expose a new top-level menu item "Notifications & Messaging" to them -- the proper location for managing user subscriptions would be below "User management".
>
> Unfortunately, my request for changing this in Notifications was immediately won't fixed [1], which is why I see the need for a broader community consensus.  I know that a change like this could probably only done in upcoming major versions of all affected modules.
>
> If the only thing that prevents this from changing are patches, then I'll happily submit some.
>
>
> Thanks,
> Daniel
>
> [1] http://drupal.org/node/366489
>
>
>