At the moment, when you fire up the permissions page with the module installed, it shows no permissions as long as you do not actively filter
http://screencast.com/t/vceYBpW9Uu

This is reversed to how it should be IMHO - especially users that are not familiar with drupal may be confused and go away thinking this cannot be the right page.
It is also not consistent with other Drupal Admin pages: e.g. on the content page, all content is shown lest you filter.

I don't know if you noticed, but there is a - somewhat old now - discussion to even include this module in core http://drupal.org/node/30843#comment-4486406

So maybe you wanna chime in there. For the time being, I would find it an improvement if you revert the fiter settings to default to show all.

Comments

cyu’s picture

cyu commented

I've kept an eye on that issue and chimed in a little, particularly addressing that aspect of the module.

http://drupal.org/node/30843#comment-3517938

If someone doesn't have a ton of permissions/roles, then this module will be of limited use and if they do have a ton I think it is friendlier not to try loading all of them initially.

This could easily be a config option though, allowing all, none, or perhaps a specific subset.

eigentor’s picture

eigentor commented

Jup, Config option is fine and apt to resolve a lot of discussions which default setting is better.
As hardly a user not knowledgable will install better perms, the one that installs it can configure that.
So I would be perfectly happy with a config option.

EvanDonovan’s picture

EvanDonovan commented

I think a configuration option would probably be best solution, though I'm not sure what the best default would be for it (all, none, or subset).

More of a bug is the fact that at least in D6, if you go to the admin/user/permissions page from one of the links on admin/by-module it doesn't actually show the module's permissions, since they are currently hidden. Don't know if there is currently an issue on this module's queue for that. If not, I could create one.

cyu’s picture

cyu commented

@EvanDonovan: I took care of that in D7, making the links from Roles or Modules pages act as filters, #1192024: Permissions link from modules page should trigger filtering

I had written similar code for D6 but I suppose I removed or broke it somewhere along the way if it currently isn't working.

EvanDonovan’s picture

EvanDonovan commented

I don't know if it is isn't working currently. This was something I noticed a good while ago, and haven't had a chance to try since. It might not have gotten fixed yet when last I tried it.

Leeteq’s picture

Leeteq commented

IMHO, this should be a configurable option, so that the site admin could choose the default behaviour of showing all or none initially.

my-family’s picture

my-family commented

In my opinion, the module is GREAT just because it enables to load an EMPTY admin/people/permissions page (which is a substantial performance enhancement). As far as I know this is the ONLY module which has this feature, so please don't remove it.

On the other hand, the configurable option for default behavior "select all/select none" would not mind.

Thank you for this extremely helpful module!

yoroy’s picture

yoroy commented
Issue summary: View changes
Issue tags: -Needs usability review

An empty page is not the best starting state for this, it suggests a search, not a filter.

cyu’s picture

cyu commented
Status: Active » Closed (outdated)

I agree that generally a filter starts with everything and a search starts with nothing, but also a filter indicates that you know your desired result and a search indicates some fuzziness to that result, so I consider this a filter module and not a search module even with the current behavior. Given the original concern of an overwhelming permissions page this module was meant to address, starting empty needs to be an option, if not the default option, and at the moment the only option. As this is a 9 year old issue with no patches, I'm going to close it as outdated.