By ray007 on

In many places the use of icons makes for a nicer gui. In order to get a more unified look, it doesn't make sense if every module brings along it's own icons, but it should be able to ask the system for an icon by a functional name.
I think we need such an API in drupal core, but for prototyping and discussing a module in contrib should be fine.

In order to do that I have started a project: http://drupal.org/project/icontheme

There's no working code yet, but a rough conversion of the pseudocode from the icon theme specification, and some thoughts about how the api for other modules to get an icon should look like. I'm hoping for a lively discussion.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

ergophobe’s picture

ergophobe commented

First, thanks for the module. I think a lot of people will like it and I'm glad to see it available. I only question the wisdom of adding icons support to drupal core.

I understand the argument for having an API that every module can call upon, but do we really want this in the core? In my opinion, one of drupal's greatest strengths is that the core is really minimal and, in principle, I oppose adding features to the core unless it is a feature that is in high-demand and that simply doesn't work as a module. If it's simply a case of something being a lot less efficient as a module, I think it should still be a module and it's up to the individual drupal admin to decide how to balance load and benefit and decide which modules to keep and which to kill.

Yosemite Explorer - hiking and climbing in Yosemite (drupal)

ray007’s picture

ray007 commented

The points is that many things look a lot nicer with some icons on the screen.

I think the goal should be, that every form item gets a '#icon' property that can be rendered in the appropriate places.
And I think we need it in core, because I'd also like that to make the admin section look nicer - each module has it's icon, each section has it's icons, each menu item can have an icon, each block to render near the title, each fieldset, ...

And for those who don't want icons or worry about performance have a setting to turn all the icons off ;-)

My other goal for drupal 6 would be to improve css themeability, but that's another topic ...