By Dries on

We are currently working on a redesign of Drupal's administration pages; the goal is to improve usability for both novice and experienced Drupal users. Michael Angeles, a long time Drupal user/contributor, has been blogging about the redesign so make sure to check out his Drupal-related blog entries. In a recent blog entry, Drupal administration: CSS revisions and UI considerations, Michael compiled a list of the most notable usability recommendations/observations contributed by fellow Drupal users and developers:

Anything to add?

Comments

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented

Tested with Drupal CVS 2002-12-28 and Mozilla 1.2 for Linux

  • After updating some options the user doesn't have feedback about the changes (ie in 'administration > site conf. > theme selector' 'Save theme settings' just shows the same page after updating)
  • The left bar takes too much space because the use of UL and LI tags
  • The top bar uses such a big font that the path for some options take two lines (ie. Administration > user management > view user accounts > users with role 'authenticated user')

-- Ernest Frigola (bluegeek at eresmas.com)

amy-at-spiffariffic.com’s picture

amy-at-spiffariffic.com commented

I've commented on this also. I'm going to try a few settings and see what looks best and then email them to Michael for incorporation into the new CSS stylesheet, if he agrees.

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented

can you post screenshot somewhere so we can see how it looks on your browser/platform?

blueboy’s picture

blueboy commented

Glad to see there's feeback . The commentaries are only my opinion, feel free to ignore them. Anyway, you can find my screenshot here.


I also think it's not very clear how to go back to the the main site from the admin section (drupal icon) and that the submision form shoudn't show the message 'Choose the appropriate item from the list:' if the user can't submit anything (ie anon user in the stadard configuration) see this.


Keep the good work


-- Ernest

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented

Ernest, you don't have the current version from CVS. Please grab the current version and come back with your comments. -michael

blueboy’s picture

blueboy commented

In mozilla 1.2 (Debian GNU Linux).. i'll do more testing but i think there's too much space before and after the horizontal line (under the admin top menu). I think that's because you use: <br /><hr /><br /> instead of just: <hr /> for the horizontal line.
-- Ernest

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented

Thought I should point out that the files required for current version are:

admin.php and misc/admin.css

-michael

hone’s picture

hone commented

I think you should put back the home link that was in 4.0.0. I find it annoying to keep highlighting stuff in the location bar and deleting it to get back to the main page to see the changes. This is with the drupal cvs from 4 am this morning.

-Hone
--
Hone
wornpath.net Admin
hone@wornpath.net

jibbajabba@iaslash.org’s picture

jibbajabba@iaslash.org commented

There was a new version committed by Dries that shows your site name in the upper left corner. The site name is actually a link to your home page. Is this satisfactory? If not, please suggest an alternative. An alternative might be to put the home link in the bottom or top of the side navigation.

hone’s picture

hone commented

I don't notice the link thing, but the drupal icon brings me back to my home page in the upper right hand corner, which is fine. Cool.
--
Hone
wornpath.net Admin
hone@wornpath.net

jibbajabba@iaslash.org’s picture

jibbajabba@iaslash.org commented

I changed the behavior of the druplicon so that it now links to drupal.org, which might be helpful for access to forums, etc. The name of your site in the upper left nav bar is a link to your home page (index.php).

adamshand’s picture

adamshand commented

I find that what I use the admin interface varies quite a lot by what stage my site is in. When I first set a site up I spend a lot of time setting up modules, themes, generall settings etc.

Once I get most things setup, I often spend a lot of time on theme specific stuff tweaking the site to look exactly like I want.

Then it's just general site owner duties, managing content, adding new news feeds etc.

It would be cool if there was a sub heading for "recently used admin options". Under there are the 5 most popular admin links used in the last 24 hours.

Just thinking outloud, feel free to ignore me Only local images are allowed.

Adam.

raster’s picture

raster commented

I like this idea. It might prove useful to have the most used links show up in their own list.

I also thought that having a special setup process might be a good idea. So when the first user (the admin) is created, it walks them through the needed setup process.

Anonymous’s picture

(not verified) commented

I'm thinking that we can still improve the UI of the admin interface. The current iteration is good, but I think we need to reduce some clutter in in the row of links across the top of each page. This row prints all sublinks for the current section. Second and third level links (e.g. comment moderation) are mingled, thus crowding the UI.

I propose:

- If you click on Site Configuration, you only see second level links such as Comment Moderation (i.e. a repeat of the subitems in the left hand column).

- If you click on Comment Moderation, you see associated 3rd level links like 'Comment thresholds, Comment moderation matrix, etc.'

- It is OK for there to be multiple paths to the same page

-moshe

isaachorton’s picture

isaachorton commented

im happy to find this post.
Ive been working on a complete minimal redesign of the Administration interface as well.
see a link to new design here http://www.s-o-u-r-c-e.info/drupal_admin.gif
I decided to use flash to handle the complexities of navigation and keep it really clean.
this is a link to an organazational structure that is incomplete but shows how i want to simplify the navigation and still keep it logical.
http://www.s-o-u-r-c-e.info/admin_map1.gif
Can i join your team?
i have 10+ years of design and usability experience to bring to the table.
-isaac

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

As I posted in your original thread http://drupal.org/node/38072
you might want to get ahold of Amazon. He is coordinating a lot of this right now and has some stuff nearly ready, so contact him soon. Also, sign up for Drupal development mailling list.

The admin pages have evolved in the three years since this original post.

-sp
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide