Weight categories on Configuration & Modules correctly

I like. People, Media and System (Site information!) all above the fold is a good thing.

Did you rewrite some of the descriptions as well? Might want to add a screenshot of the links with descriptions shown. (or open the issue that hides the descriptions by default :-)

Current situation:

needs review for testbot.

Fixing ordering of the system module defined items is very much welcome. We did a pretty mess there when adding / moving items around. For the actual patch, there are minor whitespace issues (comments not always indented with enough spaces). For the actual ordering, looking at Bojhan's screenshot, Development seems to be overlay on top. Best to gather more feedback.

Also agreeing with @yoroy that the descriptions need refinement.

I mention them because they are shown by default and we should look at that state first. Or hide the descriptions by default…

Seems like there was too little annoyance thus far. I agree it's totally annoying, but many users (including me) don't even see that page.

Not even remotely critical, sorry.

Please review. Screenshot attached.

I took the liberty of rearranging the order of a couple of menu definitions in system.module so that they correspond with the weights as much as possible. This makes it a little easier to find things in the code as they are defined in the same order ass they appear in screen.

One question I have is why the category descriptions only display for empty categories eg. workflow and user interface?

Thanks mrfelton! Let me propose an approach for how to work on this:

- Enable all core modules so that we all see the same (amount of) links
- Then, let's take it box-by-box (think inside the box for a change, how refreshing)
- Post before/after screenshot like so:

It's a bit more work but at least we will be able to track what we're doing. Seeing as how Dries commits, we could probably work with follow ups in here to adress all boxes.

As for re-ordering the boxes: lets keep that out of the scope for now. It very much needs work as well but lets do that after we're happy with each box individually. (bikeshed management tactics :-) For example, we already consciously put System top-right because the 'Site information' link is so crucial to setting up the very basics when starting out new.

Review of the actual patch: as you see, there's a profile link as well that would probably want to live a bit higher up.

I'm thinking:

- Account settings
- Profiles (not enabled by default, so wants to be very findable, because user actively wants to see it)
- Permissions (you'll set permissions even when not creating new roles)
- Roles
- IP adress blocking

@yoroy: ok, my patch only addressed reordering the boxes on the page, not the links within them as I didn't realise the patch was supposed to do that too, or instead of. I thought I did have all core modules enabled when I did this, but it seems the modules page didn't save properly.

Ok, rather than go in and try and create another patch I thought it would be better to get some consensus on the overall order first. This is what I'm thinking... I have tried to organise it so that the more physical content type things are on the left, and more abstract system-setting type things are on the right.

LEFT

PEOPLE AND PERMISSIONS
- Account settings
- Profiles
- Permissions
- Roles
- IP adress blocking
CONTENT AUTHORING
- Text formats
MEDIA
- File system
- Image styles
- Image toolkit
SEARCH AND META DATA
- Search settings
- URL Aliases
- Clean URLs
WORKFLOW
- what is this empty category here for is no core modules provide anything for it??

RIGHT

SYSTEM
- Site information
- Statistics
- Shortcuts
- Actions
DEVELOPMENT
- Performance
- Logging and errors
- Maintenance mode
- Testing
REGIONAL AND LANGUAGE
- Regional settings
- Date and time
- Languages
- Translate interface
USER INTERFACE
- what is this empty category here for is no core modules provide anything for it??
WEB SERVICES
- what is this empty category here for is no core modules provide anything for it??

Thoughts?

I actually like the idea of mrfelton.
If someone else confirms this, you can start with a patch ;)

Ah, actually I was wrong here, this was about the categories overall… sorry.

The empty categories are for contrib. See #627080: [meta-issue] Additional categories admin/config and #591682: Config pages are effectively hardcoded to some subcategory of 'admin/config' and #546956: [meta-issue] Overhaul of Information Architecture for the back story.

I'm thinking about your proposal, more on that later, but thanks again.

+1 on mfelton's proposed ordering. Though my first inclination was to want to put all the things non-developer / non-administrative users use above the fold, I think his suggestion does better: it puts all the stuff for non-devs in the same column, which is a better usability grouping.

He also brings up an excellent point about categories where there's no module enabled. Can whatever patch implements this do something to remove a category from being listed if there's no elements to select in it? I know that from my perspective, having empty categories simply generates questions from users to their developers (/support team), and heaven knows we all have enough to do without creating opportunities for users to ask questions. ;-)

Empty categories shouldn't show up on this page - at least they don't in D6, however I think there' a regression somewhere.

There's a long standing issue for links pointing to empty categories, but that's different from the blocks showing up or not.

#713388: Weight items inside categories on Config correctly was committed.

Empty categories issue is #296693: Restrict access to empty top level administration pages

Looking at the list in #13 again I have no real objections besides 'Workflow' probably needing to be in the right hand column. What does bojhan think? :)

Ok, I've created a first patch that should implement #13 except that I moved Workflow to the right bottom.

The patch in #9 moved some stuff around, I've reverted that so that it's easer to see the actual changes in this patch.

Also adding a screenshot of admin/config, note that the "Messaging" group is (unfortunately) not part of core, I was just too lazy to disable privatemsg :)

Booo, you hid the descriptions too! ;) Thanks for updating the patch.

Attaching the full page with descriptions. I'm liking this arrangement.

Two things I'm thinking about and would like to hear thoughts on:

1.
Swap 'search and metadata' and 'Regional and language' around. Regional/language settings are presented during install, so are either configured or have a sensible default (the timezone is usually detected correctly). Whereas the 'URL aliases' item in 'Search and metadata' is more than a one-off default settings page, potentially quite a 'work horse' page.

Not sure this is a must though, this is based on assumption that 'what comes earlier is more important' but as you can see in the screenshot, being last in this initial setup sets the bottom left box apart quite nicely too.

2.
Swap 'user interface' and 'development' categories around too. Looking at this screen at 1024*768, the 'development' category is the last visible one in the right column. If we put 'user interface' on top, we get to show 3 category 'headers' above the fold. Also, we expect the 'user interface' category to become the home for quite some contrib modules. With 'user interface' on top we have bigger chance of newly added items be visible straigh away. 'Development' will get additions too but not as many.

What say you?

Regional and language is somewhere you'd tend to visit fairly often (if you're translating strings for example), whereas search settings are a rare visit IMO.

I'm fine with user interface up top.

So we assume the 'translate/multi-lingual' use case comes up more often than the 'didn't install pathauto' scenario? I guess that works :)

Meaning only do point 2 in @22: Swap 'user interface' and 'development' categories around.

Hmm, I forgot date and regional stuff is in the multilingual section too, until a while back it only appeared if you had locale module enabled. In that case I'd be fine with both changes in #22. If it's just date and regional settings, those really don't get touched often, and in every operating system there in some kind of general/settings menu usually.

On the other hand, I thought there was an issue somewhere to stick URL aliases back into admin/structure? Might be too late by now.

Updated patch with with both suggestions in #22 changed.

I didn't read all of the replies in-depth here, but in comparing these two screenshots, this seems like a vast improvement over the current situation. Good job!

This is worth breaking UI freeze, IMO. Committed to HEAD.