Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.While it is a usability improvement to be able to show or hide descriptions on the main admin page, it seems confusing to me that this show/hide setting also applies on the subpages 'admin/content', 'admin/build', 'admin/settings', 'admin/user' and 'admin/reports'.
As the main admin page is very crowded, it makes sense to hide descriptions there. The sub-pages on the other hand are less crowded, without descriptions they rather look like a uninspired list of links, and don't provide the information novices need.
Several solutions would be better than the status quo:
- To keep the generalized setting, but show the same "show/hide descriptions" link on every admin subpage.
- To add a "show/hide descriptions" link with a separate settings on each admin subpage.
- To always show descriptions on admin subpages, no matter what the setting is on main admin page.
2 seems to me too complicated, I'd prefer 3, but would also be happy with 1.
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #4 | compact-items.patch | 6.03 KB | jbrown |
Comments
Comment #1
lilou commentedComment #2
andypost#220263: Generalize "Hide descriptions" link
Comment #3
jbrown commentedMany pages, e.g. admin/structure are affected by this setting, but it can only be controlled on admin/config .
I say we just make the 'hide descriptions' setting only affect admin/config .
Comment #4
jbrown commentedComment #5
yoroy commentedI know this has confused me multiple times.
Comment #6
Bojhan commentedSo how do you hide it on other pages? ie structure?
Comment #7
jbrown commentedMy patch means that you can't.
The alternative solution would be to have the 'Hide descriptions' link on every page that uses theme_admin_block_content(), but what would be the point of that? Its only required on big complicated pages.
The Structure page has very little content on it as it is.
Comment #8
jbrown commented#4: compact-items.patch queued for re-testing.
Comment #9
moshe weitzman commentedI would simply drop the hide/show feature entirely. The link clutters as much as the descriptions it tries to save us from. Just show the descriptions always, and drop the hide/show link. My .02
Comment #10
jbrown commentedI agree!
Comment #11
jbrown commentedAny consensus on whether the hide/show feature should be removed entirely?
Comment #12
Bojhan commentedNot really, I mean as much as moshe is right that the link clutters is at a completely awkward position - we need it to unclutter our interface in the case of many modules.
Comment #13
aspilicious commentedDon't drop the option. First time you like the descriptions but after a while you prefer to see as many options as possible without the descriptions.
Comment #14
cartagena commentedThanks, but that's not what I checked--these were checkboxes, not a link. And I specifically checked to hide descriptions on modules and permissions.
Comment #15
yoroy commentedStill weird. Right-aligning the link would unclutter things a lot and make this link consistent with the 'show weights' option for sortable tables, which is also a UI customization feature like this is.
Comment #16
droplet commentedfunky behaviour
Comment #17
kscheirer#4: compact-items.patch queued for re-testing.
Comment #19
c4rl commentedThe implementation of this functionality has been debatable since its inception, see #72079-62: Patch to give Drupal an overall administration page
As acknowledged way back in 2006(!), this could be implemented purely via JS, which is likely a cleaner, lightweight, and cross-theme solution.
For example, we could use a
`compact-invisible`HTML class on elements that should be hidden, then implement visibility via a`compact-mode`class to the<html>tag similar to how we add the `js` class. Then add the compound selector`.compact-mode .compact-invisible`to`.element-invisible`or`.element-hidden`.Then again, we have much more sophisticated ways of navigating Drupal since 2006, namely toolbars and contextual links; which could be reason to deprecate this feature entirely. Personally, I've never used this in my Drupal career. :)
Is anyone against deprecating? If so, let's convert this to a JS-driven approach.
Comment #20
gregglesIf it stays I would personally vote to keep it affecting all pages. I used that feature for the first time this week and was pleasantly surprised that it affects all pages. However, in general, I would be happier to just remove it. I've never seen anyone use this feature.
Comment #21
steveoliver commentedI vote +1 to keep the functionality, but as a js solution and with the toggle somewhere predictable and appropriate on all affected pages.
Comment #22
andypostThe related issue suggest opposing
Comment #31
chi commentedAs this link is controled by JavaScript it behaves like a button. So that it needs to be replaced with
buttontag.Anyway I would simply drop it or move to contrib. Never seen anyone using it.
Comment #32
pameeela commented@Chi, can you create a new ticket for the accessibility issue (and there we can decide whether to 'fix' the link or remove it), as the original issue here is quite different.
I am going to close this because the situation has changed quite a bit since and there clearly isn't much support behind this. There is no longer a 'main admin' page and this setting now only applies to admin/config, admin/structure and admin/reports. The Structure page can easily get crowded on a large site so I think it's fine to have it apply there and I don't see any issue with it on Reports either.
(FWIW I vote remove as I have been using Drupal for 10 years and did not know this existed until I found this issue!)