Use a custom menu for top level toolbar links

hey Catch - looking good.
a couple of things

1. the order should be:
Content, Structure, People, Appearance, Config & Modules, Help

2. it would be fantastic if the URL structure could map to the section naming (so we could have /people rather than /user)

Well, while this might be OK as a first step, I don't know if it is a good idea to basically split Drupal's admin IA like that. IMO people will be quite confused if the toolbar links don't match with the links and categories in the regular admin menu (which is still where breadcrumbs and the admin category / submenu pages are coming from). With this patch committed, there is no clear or intuitive way of navigation at all to get e.g. to admin/content/book or admin/user/roles.

This patch basically reduces HEAD's user experience a lot. So as this can be nothing but an interim step I think before commiting this, there should be some more discussion or thinking on what's the next step.

What's the general plan on how to deal with this issue? I mean, I have seen several different proposals for a new admin IA, but is there something more or less complete on which we have some agreement? With more or less complete I mean a model into which all current admin pages fit, e.g. the create / manage / configure IA proposed by sun. How are people going to find admin/content/book, admin/user/roles or admin/development/testing, when there are no top level links to admin/content, admin/user and admin/development?

But you know that menu links have absolutely no way to be maintained in any way? That is why admin_menu 6.x-1.x failed.

I would sincerely hope that this idea would only be a temporary measure, since having two different IAs for the admin menu can easily become a disaster. As said above, other navigation tools, URLs, breadcrumbs, etc all match the default menu structure.

I don't see how moving RSS publishing out of the Content management section and moving the content admin page one level up and doing similar adjustments on the Users area would be worse. Especially that RSS publishing settings screen is probably one of the least referenced items in core, so would be easy to move. These two changes would set up the scene for the top level Content and People items as designed without much tinkering in duplicating the IA.

Also, the "Find content" item was discussed with Mark. It does point to the same item as "Content" in the upper menu, but is a bigger call to action and especially with the icon it provides an easier way to get to this same screen. These are supposed to be configurable sets of shortcuts, so people can set up different menu items for there. This default set is aimed at content creators and will not fit all.

@catch: I think we had this same fundamentally different thinking of implementation before on this and I tried to explain my point, but did not find any evidence that it was dismissed or there is any reason to hack menu structures like you explain. As far as I see the D7 path structure would be:

/admin
/content
/structure
/appearance
/people
/config
/help

Now the config IA discussed in your linked issue would go under /admin/config. The IA of the header is not just sugar on top of the ugliness of the Drupal admin but instead a reformulation of the Drupal IA. Modules like simpletest and locale would not add to the top level but instead would add to the config section. Locale even has its place mapped out on the IA for config and modules there.

So I'd understand your patch as a temporary measure until all the IA is mapped down the Drupal paths and code, but would definitely not understand it as a definite answer to how the toolbar should work.

@catch: well, while this sounds like keeping the current implementation of /admin, it would really need to have exceptions or /admin/content, /admin/structure, etc. will show up on the config page. With all our changes to admin paths anyway, I would not worry about /admin/people possibly being on a D6 site, and a D6 -> D7 upgrade would need to resolve this anyway. (I've assumed you mean /admin/people, not /people, since /admin/people would be what shows up on the toolbar).

If modules add items to the top-level categories, but those do not appear in the toolbar, then we are introducing a major WTF issue.

This looks like much cosmetics to me, which would need to be removed later on - especially the admin/settings => admin/config renaming, resp. admin => admin/config path alias.

So why not this way:

1) Turn /admin into /admin/settings, removing /admin, replacing the default sub-item listing on /admin/settings

2) Directly use the top-level items of the Management menu from menu router for the toolbar.

3) Build the Configuration dashboard on /admin/settings. Also fix the admin menu system nightmare, which is totally dependent on an "admin" menu link that must live in the same menu as the children.

4) Rename /admin/settings to /admin/config.

Due to 1), the Management menu starts with the categories directly (next to "Add content"). No path aliases, and cosmetics come last.

@catch: Gosh, my indentation did not come over in my comment above. Let me retry:

/admin
  /content
  /structure
  /appearance
  /people
  /config
  /help

I don't think it would be a problem at all, if contrib modules would need to add their paths under /admin/config/category/ since that would even replicate the navigation structure keeping tradition with how Drupal worked so far. Hacking around with aliasing paths does not sound like a great idea.