Support for Drupal 7 is ending on 5 January 2025—it’s time to migrate to Drupal 10! Learn about the many benefits of Drupal 10 and find migration tools in our resource center.The attached patch modifies the default theme_help() so that $help is not returned when the user has purposely hidden descriptions using the Hide descriptions link on the /admin page. (The help text is not displayed when system_admin_compact_mode() returns true.) Embedded documentation available at /admin/help is not affected.
I realize that this is a feature request which should rightfully belong to Drupal 7. I can't really think of a way to legitimately classify this as a bug report, so I realize that someone will likely move this to 7.
As a further disclaimer, I have nothing against the help text -- indeed, I'm a big fan of it.
But, on some pages, having the help text significantly adds to the noise level, and arguably drowns out some signal. The best example we have of this, IMO, is the modules page. I've attached two screenshots -- one showing the normal state of this page, with help text, and the other showing this page without help displayed. The compact version is more clear for experienced users, and highlights Update status module (and other notices) more effectively.
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| #3 | 205226.patch | 2.07 KB | keith.smith |
| #2 | hidehelp_2.patch | 616 bytes | lilou |
| hidehelp.patch | 710 bytes | keith.smith | |
| module_compact.png | 42.12 KB | keith.smith | |
| module_expanded.png | 53.48 KB | keith.smith | |
Comments
Comment #1
keith.smith CreditAttribution: keith.smith commentedEh. Who am I kidding. This should go to 7.x-dev (and really, should also include some string changes to make this behavior clear).
Comment #2
lilou CreditAttribution: lilou commentedReroll ...
Comment #3
keith.smith CreditAttribution: keith.smith commentedI still think this is a nice "tweak" that helps to reduce "clutter" on some pages, namely, admin/build/modules. This version also adjusts the strings to reflect the new functionality.
Comment #5
lilou CreditAttribution: lilou commentedSee: #335122: Test clean HEAD after every commit and http://pastebin.ca/1258476
Comment #6
catchSeems like a good idea, moving to usability.
Comment #8
psynaptic CreditAttribution: psynaptic commentedThis has been bugging me for a while since it really does get in the way of the developer during development and any time you need to edit any of the pages where the help text is obtrusively long.
I do however think it needs to be tied to individual users or at least roles and selectable per help message with a 'hide all' type checkbox somewhere in admin.
I'll see if I have a bit of free time and look into adding my suggestions.
Comment #9
gaele CreditAttribution: gaele commented+1 for the option to toggle the help text.
How does this relate to #299050: Help System - Master Patch?
Comment #10
yoroy CreditAttribution: yoroy commentedI think rewriting the help texts to be shorter and to contain actually practical info is a much better idea. We did quite a lot of that for D7, must do more of that in D8. I'm not sure we really need this feature since it's mostly a workaround for a symptom.
Comment #12
Screenack CreditAttribution: Screenack as a volunteer and at Duke University commentedThe code in this ticket is for Drupal 7. As a general concept, this ticket provides a Drupal-8 specific list of options related to the display behavior of compacting help text on and across the admin pages. I've reassigned to the 7 branch, although this ticket may be outdated?