Why did I install admin_menu in favor of the Toolbar in Drupal 8?

Toolbar on install felt like it took a long time to go to the intended admin page. Admin Menu lets me navigate straight there without interstitial pages.

EDIT: thinking of D7 when posting.

Why would I install admin_menu over Toolbar?
As an admin:
- just hovering items shows subitems
- the depth is better with admin_menu
- minimalistic
- developper links with devel (flush caches, index, ...)
- number of connected users (priority=0.000001)

As a lambda user:
- Toolbar lacks a setting to not be displayed even after scroll (i.e. position not fixed)

Why would I keep the core Toolbar?
As an admin:
- I'm too lazy too do a drush dl admin_menu
- mobile-friendly

As a lambda user:
- it is much more user-friendly
- ooh, pretty icons
- my menu stay the same after loading page
- shortcuts make much more sense now that they really part of the Toolbar (this is my view, they were there before but I never used them/took too much place)
- mobile-friendly

I hope that helps :)

Too many clicks to access sub menus, it's my major problem with the core toolbar.

What I was trying to convey with #1 applies to D8 also. Here's an animation showing navigation to Manage Fields on Articles (further steps to edit a field). (GIF haters, shield your eyes, this ain't pretty.)

My two main issues with this are (1) the navigation jumps around the page and (2) it takes many clicks to navigate to a single known Drupal admin screen (of which, Toolbar gets you only two steps, to "Structure").

With Admin Menu this can be done by hover navigating the mouse through the menu tree, and feels much quicker to someone familiar with the Drupal menu layout. To a less familiar user, they often go part-way via Admin Menu and then "discover" their way from there.

OTOH Admin Menu's UI feels wrong when it comes to reaching "top level" menu items, eg "People" or "Extend", because in most menus the top-level item isn't a selectable item, it's used to expose the menu options. (I suspect this may be the best available option given the structure, but casual testing with users tells me it confuses.)

Toolbar style nav feels like it's intended to be more discoverable, but the targets moving around so much really impairs that IMO. Much of that nav is in Drupal's admin screens and outside the bounds of Toolbar, in which case my Toolbar objection probably boils down to "it doesn't reach as far".

Why did I install admin_menu in favor of the Toolbar in Drupal 8?

So the reason i prefer the admin_menu over the toolbar is that it actually speeds me up, relative to just using
the keyboard and type in URLs. Toolbar doesn't help here, as you have to click on many links, especially in the depths of admin/configuration.
Toolbar though, seems to be a) good for people which don't know drupal yet, so less to read helps them, and probably site editors, as they just have to access certain parts of the site really often. When they do have to for example set the site into maintenance mode, the additional effort relative to admin_menu doesn't matter as it is rare.

Keep up with the work which helps the edge case users, aka. developers, to be productive.

For me it's always been the dropdowns instead of click click click and for Drupal 8 the search box in admin_menu is a killer feature :) But mostly it's being able to find menu items without having to click into several areas.

To answer it simply admin_menu is the best. So I'll use it.
D6
For me it all started with D6 I tried using admin but while developing why i have to click and wait for output and click again to wait for another click things should be more smooth. For a novice dev I think it is nightmare because you don't know where to find specific option and you are doing most of the stuff from GUI.
So admin_menu gave me freedom, less clicks and I can find options with more speed/less time.
D7
In D7, it came with three flops dashboard, overlay and toolbar. Thank God dashboard is not the part of core anymore. And I hope someone will work on it to make it better in contrib. I don't want get off topic but as dev why the hell i want overlay it is slow I don't want to do dev work in a popup window. Toolbar, why the hell I want to see admin/* page I always wanted to go to admin/*/* page so give me drop down people. So here comes admin_menu with drop downs and beautiful admin_menu_toolbar.
IMO D7 evolution of admin_menu was awesome. Now I can access all the admin links till the very end and you can attach shortcuts bar. I personally don't like search box but I think for novice dev it is a good feature.
D8
There is nothing much to say it is D6 admin module all over again click click click and one more click. I am not probably never going to use my drupal sites admin side on mobile but on tablet maybe. So IMHO we don't want all these massive rework on toolbar. Responsiveness is good. Responsive tables are good so let's use that technique to hide some admin menu items for smaller screen and if drop downs are messy to use on touch screen then don't show drop downs. I am wondering how toolbar is going to look when commerce guys will add store link to it.

Wishlist for D8 admin_menu. IMO current admin menu is good and it needs some new features like hiding some menu items for small screen just like tables and replace drop downs with toggle which are easy to use on touch screen. A new module admin_menu_mobile can provide this. ;)

I'll definitely use admin_menu instead of toolbar because it is more speedy and less clicky to get the development done.

And I hope admin_menu will replace toolbar in D9. :)

I won't build a Drupal 6-7-8 site without Admin Menu or some equivalent. The toolbar and method of drilling down through the pages is too slow for me. Normally, I don't favor drop down (or pop out or other varieties) menus on websites. But on an administration interface, a drop down is a necessity to me.

My only complaint is that the font is too small out of the box (I always boost it from 9px up to 12px).

That's a shame. Oh well, that just means Toolbar will continue to be an obscure core module that everyone disables, and Admin Menu will continue to be a module installed on 99% of all Drupal sites. Sorry, but Toolbar needs to be completely redeveloped by someone who knows user interface basics. I understand they've already kind of ground-upped it in D8, but it's a joke still in terms of usability. You can't use that to manage a site.

But that's the awesome thing about Drupal, I'm sure Admin Menu will still be there for me :)

EDIT: spelling and corrections.

It appears to be a mutual feeling across the community that admin_menu is by far superior from a usability and performance point of view.
Usually, we disable overlay and toolbar in d7 install profiles in favour of admin_menu + admin_menu_toolbar.

I vote to get rid of overlay and toolbar modules from core and +1 for admin_menu + admin_menu_toolbar to core.

Cheers,
Karu

agree with pretty much all the comments here.

one thing that would nice would be to enable to Toolbar menu for "touch" devices and Admin menu for "mouse" devices.

Thread about this in gdo: http://groups.drupal.org/node/290788

grobot thank you for your fantastic screenshot. It makes the point very well :)

admin_menu is the first module I install on any Drupal. I made it a requirement at my company as well.

It lets you accesss every admin page from a single location. It is a fantastic and essential tool for Drupal. I love the hover, not having to click thousand times to get to a page. (I understand mobile has tap, not hover, hence the clickety click experience with Toolbar on desktop, still I doubt site builders will be using mobile to build a site)...

Toolbar is one of the first things I disable on D7, and will do on D8 as well...

oh and a BIG THANK YOU FOR sun for admin_menu.

If the (proposed) "Jump To" part of the D8 Toolbar existed and worked well, then I'd use it.

In D7, whether I have Admin Menu or Toolbar, I also install Coffee, because it's way quicker to get to something via the keyboard than by using the mouse.

So if, as with Coffee, I could hit Alt+D and type in the name of a page I want to go to, then I'd happily forget about Admin Menu and use Toolbar.

...I doubt site builders will be using mobile to build a site.

Amen!! I lost count of how many times I mentioned this. I agree that the arguments about the "mobile first" hype and all are valid, but only when it comes to regular users (as in site visitors) - not site admins or themers. OTOH there are content authors that sit somewhere in between the other two groups I mentioned, but -at least from my experience- any menu is of very little use to them, since they usually stick to the other navigation elements like breadcrumbs and local tasks tabs.

+1 for not being able to quickly get to a deep path like we can with the dropdowns in contrib

This is the one and only thing for me, the rest is simple enough to work around.

#18 +1

I personally like the search feature of admin_menu. It is similar to Coffee in that it allows you to search quickly but it also shows you where in the menu the item is when it's hovered-over, allowing you to learn and quicken your navigation the next time.

I believe all main menu items in admin_menu take you to pages that provide more in-depth info on each item within it, so i don't see how the toolbar is any different, just only limits functionality for advanced users.

I'd think I'd be about as fast clicking into the admin_menu search box as I would hitting the keyboard command for Coffee, so I don't see that as anything useful or needed unless you're somehow unable to use a mouse.

My clients get instructions on how to change things on the site and by giving them a path to navigate the admin_menu quickly, I see that being less confusing than only going 1 or 2 levels down, then having some other interface show up that then complicates the instructions a bit.

Another advantage of admin_menu right now is that it can be switched with Toolbar (via admin_menu_suppress()) for some users, using the Admin Menu Select module.

I use admin_menu to build Drupal 7 sites and switch to the regular toolbar when I hand the site over to the client. The reason is that every click requires a page refresh. Even on my new macbook pro that takes much longer than using a drop down menu to go directly to the page I need. I'm not sure one menu can satisfy both site builders and end users. Why not have the choice to install the one you want when you want it?

I often install drupal toolbar and admin menu and give no roles access to the admin menu and use a little bit of code to stop the toolbar from displaying to user 1.

So user 1 gets the admin menu and other admins get the normal toolbar.

From my #1847274-5: Introduce dropdown menus to menus when the tray is in a horizontal orientation:

• I have tested the new toolbar from D8 some days.
• On nearly all of my D7-sites, I use the module admin_menu.
• You can look at some quite new D7-distributions, where I asked the maintainers to "Install admin-menu toolbar instead of core toolbar". They all have changed the default-toolbar.
• The new D8-toolbar in horizontal orientation has the same ugly behavior as the D7-toolbar.
• When I do admin-tasks, I use a latop or desktop and NOT a smartphone. And you?

Please add the behavior of the module admin_menu, when the D8-toolbar is in horizontal orientation.

Perhaps add a setting for the user to change this. But I think, the default should be to show this new behavior.

I wish, that issue #1847274: Introduce dropdown menus to menus when the tray is in a horizontal orientation gets success soon.

Wusel

I often install drupal toolbar and admin menu and give no roles access to the admin menu and use a little bit of code to stop the toolbar from displaying to user 1. ...

Administration Menu Select:

Add this issue to the list of reasons: #1852346: [discussion, no patch] Toolbar UI regression: shortcuts and menu not visible at same time

Apparently this is thought to be an acceptable regression ("decision in the design") and is pending UX tests to decide if it actually is a regression or not.

I want dropdowns.

The best that Toolbar D8 can get me to is, say, admin/structure. That's useless. I am still several clicks away from the field admin for my node type, or the field display options for teaser view.

Toolbar D8 certainly looks pretty, and it's a big improvement on D7, but it's still no good for a site admin.

+1 for dropdowns, yes that is a non-starter for using Toolbar.

After #2010046-3: Add "update.php" as a menu item:
I agree to #5 of this issue:

the module "admin-menu" is very much smarter for admins on normal computers (no smarphones), where I do the administration of a website, as the module "toolbar" of D8.

Wusel

After the above comment I re-read #5 and it says:

OTOH Admin Menu's UI feels wrong when it comes to reaching "top level" menu items, eg "People" or "Extend", because in most menus the top-level item isn't a selectable item, it's used to expose the menu options. (I suspect this may be the best available option given the structure, but casual testing with users tells me it confuses.)

I don't believe I can think of any top level menu items that are not clickable items.
Can anyone else?

"People" and "Extend" are both clickable and go to valid pages.

The only menus I can think of that do not have an overview page as a main menu item would be in an operating system bar like Mac OS.

Oh, so he was saying menus outside of drupal don't have clickable top level menu items.
I misunderstood.

Seeing as drupal has those landing pages (which other places like mac & windows os don't), you need some way of getting to them
So if we didn't have the top level items clickable then we would have to add a duplicate menu item as the first item, which means confusing users, and messing with the default way the menu items come out of the database.

I don't think it is a great idea.

If we are comparing to other menu systems, make sure they are actually comparable to what we have in drupal.

I must admit clickable top level menus were not something I was used to before Drupal as said above in OS's like Mac & Windows the top level is not clickable. It was one of those learning points and is sometimes confusing for users but at least the landing page is helpful. I don't really have any better suggestions just got used to it.

In short:

1. Toolbar requires to many clicks to get anywhere, time is money
2. Toolbar is too big and ugly, icons are fuzzy on retina (which I use most of the time)
3. Toolbar is content manager/site builder/Drupal beginner centric, I do theme development and just need to get shit done
4. Toolbar has weird ideas about responsiveness, flipping to the left is whacky and not the standard interaction for menus in RD (which is to minimise into an icon or select list etc)
5. Admin menus access to many depts is the biggest win, I don't want to click and hunt which is slow and confusing (well covered in #5)

I completely agree with what Jeff Burnz said above.

Please commit #1965552: Convert service registration to YAML — admin_menu is currently crashing D8 and Drupal is unusable without it.

admin_menu gets me to every page in the admin menu tree with a single click, and with a middle-click it opens the page in a new browser tab. If you're used to working that way, you'll never want to go back to overlay and toolbar.

Updated issue summary.

Drupal 8 admin toolbar makes modules like admin menu obsolete. D8 is looking good and it was a breeze to navigate.

No, admin module is very much better for admins at "normal" computers.
I think, I never will admin a website on a smartphone! I will use a tablet or a laptop or a desktop, which are the kind of my computers to admin.

I guess, that on all of my drupal websites I will uninstall the new core-toolbar on D8 like I do this at D7. Admin menu is better!

Wusel

@ #36 clearly you enjoy clicking through hundreds of pages you really shouldn't have to just to get stuff done, all power you to, on the other hand time is money and I would rather be spending time with my family or saving my clients money by getting stuff done fast, I really, really don't need to click three or four times to add a node. I mean seriously - this is supposed to be a good workflow?

@ #38 right, it takes a couple of extra seconds to click, "time is money", only if your into chasing your own tail, money doesn't control me lol.

On D7 I use the admin module which I think is better than the administration menu. D8 is pretty simple and the clicking is pretty straight forward, it hasn't slowed down my activity in the least. I get why some like the fast food or in this case click method, a few seconds more won't make much difference. The less extra modules you need the faster Drupal will be.

So far, I'm liking Drupal 8 a lot.

@espirates:

It really depends on the user and how they use drupal.

For the casual admin it probably doesn't matter, but for people who spend 8 to 12+ hours, 5 to 7 days a week, most weeks of the year using drupal, the extra couple of seconds for each click gets to be quite infuriating. - At least in my experience.

Until you can drill deep into the menu with a single click admin menu is going to be a superior solution for these types of users.

The admin module you mention is another viable alternative, with some users prefering it and some prefering admin menu.

I don't think the added overhead of admin menu being installed makes up for an extra 2 or 3 page reloads

@espirates: exactly what @rooby said. Also don't be confused about using additional modules (and thus slowing down your site) - admin_menu is meant to be used *instead* of the core toolbar. So, you enable one module, you disable another, you're back at the same number of modules ;)

#39, excuse me? I choose to spend more time with my children and less time working to pay the bills (that we all have, including you), which is about valuing time with my family. For the past two and half years I battled serious illness not knowing if I will live another day - I know all about making every minute count. Do not make assumptions about peoples circumstance, we all have our reasons for wanting to save time.

This thread is about why we choose Admin menu over Toolbar, not for single use case myopic views of how people work. Please read the thread, you will see why many, many people use this module, it's about vital seconds that turn into days, weeks and months over years and years of working as a full time Drupal developer, the exact same reason I choose OSX and Apple products over all others, they just work, are fast and get the job done with least fuss. I do not have time for navigation tools like Toolbar in D8 core, as good as it might be for casual site builders it is NOT a developer tool, was never meant to be a developer tool and therefor we need a dev tool like Admin menu.

I am using Toolbar extensively right now due to heavy development of Adaptivetheme D8 and other project ports, Toolbar drives me spare, I can only work by having many open tabs and keyboard driven tab switching, which I do anyway, but this is on a whole other level. I work very fast most of the time and Toolbar is a major impediment to my work style and general developer flow.

Yeah, it all boils down to the fact that one of the features we all greatly appreciate in admin_menu is its hover events and how they help us navigate fast, without any additional page loads. Core Toolbar on the other hand was created with mobile first in mind (beats me why people would do serious admin work on limited mobile screens, but that's a totally different issue), so it relies on clicking/tapping - which is what we hate.

@klonos hit the nail on the head in #43.

A compromise with the D8 toolbar: putting it into vertical mode (i.e. at left, not across the top of the screen) does allow you to drill down (with clicks, not hover) without page loads.

#44, true, but not really an option for me doing heavy responsive design/development work, the vertical mode screws up layout and I have to click the tray away, so end up clicking just as much if not more - lots of clicks to hide the tray (second level of links), seriously I cannot wait for Admin Menu D8, sun where are you, we need you :)

seriously I cannot wait for Admin Menu D8, sun where are you, we need you :)

See #1419044: Responsive strategy for admin_menu

#46awesome, thanks for the link, will be following and helping as much as possible, I assume sun and co are still very busy with D8 core.

hi some one is asking what the module bundled with 'administration menu' named 'Administration Development tools' is doing and is for what ?

can some one make it clear for us. Thanks.RegarDS.

I can see a lot of feedbacks/comments, most of them very similar.

But after 2 years I don't see any of them be taken into consideration, as Toolbar still lacks on dropdowns and development tools like flush caches.

Can we assume they won't be part of Drupal 8.0 and so start planning our D8 life with admin menu?

Am I missing anything?

I agree with #49. I am looking forward to the core toolbar module in terms of enabling it for end-user/client site management. However, from a dev perspective, it takes too long to navigate.

It's looking like the D8 toolbar (D7 navbar) is working towards using plugins so that it can be enhanced / expanded upon by other modules. Take a look at these issues:
#1847198: Update the structure returned by hook_toolbar()
#1894964: Make the Toolbar PHP and JavaScript API more flexible so that it enables contrib to leverage it

So I would think that the development tasks could be added. Granted, it is still a click to expand a menu vs the hover-drop-down effect.

One should understand the difference between end user and administrators/content creators. I feel the toolbar is for end users. I wish admin menu will remain part of drupal as a core (preferably)/optional mdoule.

admin_menu provides drop-down menus, so you can find, and get to, deep links very quickly with a single click.

It's the drop-down menus that matter to me.

I have created a fork of admin_menu 8.x-3.x on github. Please help me fix it for Drupal 8
PRs are welcome. https://github.com/jibran/admin_menu

Might be worth a bit of explanation about why you forked. What are the differences between your version and this one.

Also if you have changes you want to add to this module you should create patches and post them in this issue queue (in their own issues, not this one).

@rooby neither @sun nor @Dave Reid has time to maintain the D8 version of the module. See #2275025-6: Drupal 8 - Install fails. In #1965552-21: Convert service registration to YAML we have a green patch for last year but no one committed it so yeah I tried to add patches to issues.
I simple forked it to make it workable again with Drupal 8. I don't want to take the co-maintainership of 8.x-3.x branch because I don't think I am a capable or eligible for that kind responsibility with this great module.
There is no difference between my version and this one. This one is not working anymore and no one is willing to maintain it and I am just trying to provide a helping hand.
I hope this explains my action. :)

> neither @sun nor @Dave Reid has time to maintain the D8 version of the module. See #2275025-6: Drupal 8 - Install fails. In #1965552-21: Convert service registration to YAML we have a green patch for last year but no one committed it

That's a pain :(

Rather than fork and divert efforts to github, why not request maintainer access?

Rather than fork and divert efforts to github, why not request maintainer access?

I have not worked on admin_menu D6 or D7 version and I have not worked on D8 version a lot as well so I don't think I should request for maintainership.

Well if you feel qualified to maintain a fork, you should be up to co-maintaining here :) As with github, let the community assist you by reviewing patches and only make commits once they've had several user reviews.

Ok so I've spoken to Dave Reid on twitter, and the reply I got is that the maintainers are most definitely active. So forking -- whether here or on github -- is not a good idea.

I think it is important to realize that as of this week 510,447 Drupal sites have admin_menu and it is regarded as the main admin menu. It is great there is a streamlined mobile-savvy one for end users but nearly all experienced people have used this for desktop site development.

I have updated a bunch of the major issues at #2398395: [meta] Port Admin Menu to Drupal 8 and we have many of the fatal errors resolved at #2563867: PHP Fatal errors: Cannot instantiate interface Drupal\Core\Cache\CacheBackendInterface and others. While there is a significant amount of puzzling dated APIs, a lot of patches are already around covering a large percentage of it. With D8 getting closer many people would surely love to have their old timey admin menus as they get used to everything else. We need a sense of green light for going ahead with things but I think it's worth it to save one of the most popular modules.

It is too late to improve some things about core toolbar and it is worth going for a proven good toolbar for admins, not just content managers.

new it makes sense to file new issue about "navbar vs admin_menu"

Its worth noting that today @sun might really enjoy the module admin_toolbar for 8.x as it brings forward a bunch of features from the original module.

https://www.drupal.org/project/admin_toolbar

admin_toolbar is great, but it lacks some key features that Admin menu has:

- it has submenus for entity types and their field configuration, but these are hardcoded to core entities
- it doesn't expand as far as fields
- it has menu items from Devel, but these are hardcoded to subset of items from the Devel menu

Also, because the menu items are much larger, it's not going to scale to lots of modules providing config menu items.

A single fixed bar with drop downs means less clicking.

Having multiple levels of fixed menus also makes themeing a bit harder if you are implementing more complex layouts because you have to deal with multiple menu dimensions.

While there is the Drupal.displace javascript utility it is still more complex than having a single level toolbar with dropdowns.

Admin Menu is great for Drupal 7 (and was my goto in Drupal 6 too) but the Drupal 8 version will grenade your website.

The best current replacement that works is: https://www.drupal.org/project/admin_toolbar. It provides me everything I need and I can add menu items as needed.

After using D8 for a couple of months now, i've decided i can't live with Admin Toolbar the way it works. Its a waste of space! I've created a small module that transforms the current Admin Toolbar module into Admin Menu. It supports Adminimal Theme and Environment Indicator.

I've released it here: Admin Toolbar Slim

Please note that this is not a rewrite of Admin Menu but a CSS hack of Admin Toolbar. I'm working with it for a couple of weeks now without a problem. Suggestions and help are welcome.

Good idea!
Could you post it as a module to d.org?

@joachim: Since i've just registered here, i can only upload sandbox modules. You'll find the module over here: Admin Toolbar Slim. It would be nice to get it into a real project. But from what i've read, it seem like a rather complicated process for new users.

It's mostly a lengthy process, because there aren't enough people to review them.

Create an application for full project, and ping me on IRC or post the link here and I'll try to find time to review it.

@joachim: I've created an application over here.

@pucowanje $('#toolbar-bar a').removeAttr('title');, hooray! The guys doing Admin toolbar refused to listen on this point, how annoying they are, thank you very much!

$('#toolbar-bar a').removeAttr('title');

Could that potentially be done with a theme override or preprocessor instead of in JS?

@rooby: I was not sure about the impact on speed if you have to parse this rather large menu structure with a preprocessor on every page load. Depending on the size of your project, the structure of the menu can be quite large. I am open to suggestions and updates once the project is published. But i think its best not to discuss this here since its off topic.

I have release my Toolbar Themes module:

https://www.drupal.org/project/toolbar_themes

Originally I wrote this so I could create custom toolbar menu themes for my commercial themes and other projects, so I decided to clean it up and release it.

There are three themes included by default, one is like Admin Menu. It supports all of D8 Toolbar behaviours/orientations etc, you can hide the tabs and icons (hidden by default), change the font size and create your own themes in your theme or module.

If you find it useful, great, it certainly makes styling the toolbar very easy, and anyone willing to test would be much appreciated :)

Very nice!

I think we should probably now say that Admin Menu is obsolete in D8, and focus efforts on bringing its features in to Admin Toolbar.

These include things like better handling of tabs in the menu, extensibility to all entity types rather than hardcoding to core's, and providing extensibility to add child menu items.

Nice Module. Its similar to the things i tried to archive with my module but it's much better. I don't see any reason to keep mine online.

@Jeff Burnz: thank you for this great module!

I think with some polishing that module could become very popular.

@bramvandenbulcke yep it could do with a few more iterations, I'm more or less waiting on bugs to show up etc and other feedback.

@Jeff Burnz: amazing work! Please consider proposing all or parts of what you did into Drupal core.

@Wim Leers, good idea, I'll have a think about it, probably not all is good for core, but the basic idea to enable themes for Toolbar is, even if we only implement one. I'll have a think and open an issue.

April 2017 update: don't install this module at D8! It's break the site and nobody cares. If you got to this problem find solution here.

No more Admin Menu for Drupal 8. Use Admin Toolbar instead.

Against Core Toolbar

• Mysterious theme dependent issue. See #2950920: Cripples toolbar functionality
• Too many clicks. The vertical version is much better, showing sub menu items without reloading the page, but unfortunately it is not the default. Why not simply remove the horizontal version? Or why it was made inconsistently worse than the vertical version?

In favour of Core Toolbar

• It is part of core and therefore stable guaranteed maintenance.

In this moment we indicate the use of the Admin Toolbar module