Posted by Merlin on Sun Jul 23, 2006 6:02 pm.
If you're reading this blog for the first time, you don't know about my efforts to improve the administrative user experience of Drupal. If you're reading this blog for the second time, you probably came here because of those efforts. If you've been following me, you might know that I've turned from the initial effort of alternadmin to attempting to get some of the stuff into core. That isn't to say that I don't want to continue work on alternadmin, but obviously getting the stuff into Drupal core is going to be much more beneficial in the long term. Even though I can't do *as much* in core as I'd like, I think I can still accomplish a lot.
It helps, of course, that Dries is completely behind these efforts and wants to see administration improve as much as I do, and he's gone to some lengths to help insure it does as well.
Today I wrote--for the third time--a complete re-organization of the primary Drupal administrative interface. It doesn't really change any of the actual administrative pages (that's for later), but just re-organizing this stuff makes a very large difference. This patch is currently under community review, and will probably see some changes, but I'm very hopeful that it will go in.
Here's a screenshot:
Organization of admin functions
You address one of Drupal's real problems - incomprehensibility to the newbie, especially to those who will only have a passing reference to the actual interface but want to feel they basically understand it, among these buyers. The case for using and contributing to Drupal, is easily made by anyone who knows its features and sees its rapid development, bug-fixing, etc. Drupal is an open source victory. One example of improvements is in your reducing the learning curve, and other signage and layout improvements for ease of understanding how well Drupal does things, like the top menu in the Government of Canada's Common Look and Feel, shown in drag at http://liquidvisual.ca/visitors
Thanks!
Simple, but effective
I really like this. It makes things so simple to understand, even for newbies.
Few comments, though:
1.) Books and categories are listed under content. Does this mean other stuff created by modules will also find a place here?
2.) Uniformity in help text? for example, 'Tools to allow you to adjust basic site configuration options' instead of 'These tools...'
Thank you thank you thank you...
I am soooo glad that you are trying to improve the admin user experience.
(The current stuff is usable but I'm all for making things easier to use.)
Keep up the good work.
Love
You are exactly right. I'm back here because of the Admin interface. I saw the screenshots and I'm in love. I really do hope it will get to core but an interim 4.7 module would be very very nice.
BTW: I'm thinking that the Admin UI is one of the testaments to Drupal's greatness. It means it has to be really good if users are willing to put up with it. I switched to Drupal from Joomla on my personal site and almost gave up because of this. The only reason I stuck it out was because I thought there must be some error and I will eventually click my way through to a comprehensible UI. By the time I figured out there is no such thing I was hooked on the features.
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