In #518750: Rethink the system settings form, the "reset to defaults" button was removed from the theme settings forms on /admin/appearance/settings (global settings) and /admin/appearance/settings/[themename] (theme-specific settings).

Unfortunately, it isn't clear to the user how the global settings relate to the theme-specific settings. Theme-specific settings are following the global settings 'automagically' until the first time you save the settings form for a specific theme. On that moment, that theme stops following the global settings and starts storing it's own settings. I think the theme settings forms are suffering from a couple of problems:
1) The user doesn't know when he is breaking the invisible link with the global settings.
2) The theme even starts using its own settings (instead of global) if the form is submitted without changes.
3) On the theme-specific form, you can't see if you're looking at default values (loaded from the global settings) or at theme-specific settings.
4) There is no way to switch back to global settings (but OK, that choice was made in #518750).
5) It is not clear is global settings are overridden per-setting (which is not the case) or for the theme as a whole (which is what happens).
6) The help text still refers to the "reset to default" button which does exist anymore.

Maybe I'm missing a really important use case here, but I don't see the need for global theme settings at all. You enable a theme, configure the settings and you're good to go. I only do that once or twice on each site I build. The global settings are making an educated guess as long as I haven't adjusted the theme-specific settings. That's not a huge time saver, especially now that the "Display author and date information" settings have been moved elsewhere. As far as I'm concerned, default values can simply be hard-coded in variable_get calls, just like you would do with your average module.

I'm afraid that it's too late to address all of this in D7, except for point 6), so for now, this patch only fixes the incorrect help text. If it's not yet too late to fix other points as well, please let me know so we can work on the patch some more.

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Comments

marcvangend’s picture

Status: Active » Needs review
Issue tags: +Usability, +D7UX
Dries’s picture

The idea of removing global theme settings is intriguing, and something I'd like to discuss some more actually.

Bojhan’s picture

I am totally fine with removing global settings, however it should be to late in the cycle to do this.

Bojhan’s picture

Title: Usability and help text on global and theme-specific settings forms » Remove global theme settings
Version: 7.x-dev » 8.x-dev

Yes, thinking about it more we are in feature and UI freeze an improvement like this which is not necessarily critical is sadly not allowed in anymore

marcvangend’s picture

Version: 8.x-dev » 7.x-dev

Please don't move this to D8 yet, at least the patch for the incorrect help text should go into D7.

Bojhan’s picture

Title: Remove global theme settings » Cleanup left over set-to-global-defaults description

Ok, retitling this then - lets just fix the msg and discuss the removal of global theme settings in a new propper issue.

marcvangend’s picture

Bojhan, you're right. I created a new issue for the removal of global theme settings at #745402: Consider the removal of global theme settings.

Now that this issue is only about the cleanup of the help message, I would consider this patch (re-rolled against HEAD) rtbc.

marcvangend’s picture

Status: Needs review » Reviewed & tested by the community

Test bot agrees.

Dries’s picture

Status: Reviewed & tested by the community » Fixed

Committed to CVS HEAD.

David_Rothstein’s picture

I think some of the issues @marcvangend mentioned above definitely seem like bugs for Drupal 7 and have created an issue for that accordingly:

#749018: No way to make a theme go back to using the global theme settings

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)
Issue tags: -Usability, -D7UX, -#d7ux

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.