Drupal 6 usability suggestions?

Re #6, please see:
http://drupal.org/node/111140#comment-201957

Comments are welcome.

--
Jakob Persson
Drupal developer, web designer and usability consultant
http://www.jakob-persson.com

There's some items in Drupal that are hard coded in, and it would be great to have the option of changing them via Admin settings.

An example I came across today was the 'Edit' tab on your account. For some sites, I'd like to change this to 'Account Settings'.
This requires a dip into template.php to add:

  if (arg(0) == 'user') {
    $vars['tabs'] = str_replace('Edit</a>', 'Account Settings</a>', $vars['tabs']);
  }

It could be helpful to bring some things like that into the system, rather than hacking them. Lots of progress has been made on this front, but I can think of a few outstanding situations.
Just a thought.

Hello,

What about a few improvements in form api such as:
1. Possibility to alter button captions (which is impossible now without hacking modules).
2. Better support of multistep forms.
3. Javascript maxlength for textareas.

----------------
Regards,
Dmitry Kresin, ARDAS group (ARDAS group)

I know it is possible to create custom question fields with cck and even create custom searches with a combination of views and another module, but couldn't this be simplified? It seems like the cck module should be designed with an option to create searches with any of it's fields. This would make the system much more powerful I think.

For some small and simple content types, the "preview" button doesn't always make sense. Removing it can be done by theming the node input forms, but it might be nice to have a simple setting in the content type settings form (maybe in an "advanced" section) that lets you choose whether the preview is disabled, optional or required on a per-content-type basis (as opposed to the general setting that only lets you decide whether preview is required or optional for all content types).

Hello,

Building up a drupal site involves a lot of modules choosing and installing. Today, thanks to the .info file and the "dependencies" variable, it is possible to display information about a module dependencies and to prevent a module from being enabled when dependencies are not met.

So far so good :)

When you are testing modules, sometimes it is not straightforward not well documented that a module is incompatible with another one. The latest example i have in mind are the "upload image" and "inline" modules.

So i was wondering if drupal could mimic debian's package "conflicts" variable in .info files. The consequence is that it would not be possible to enable a module until the conflicting module(s) is/are disabled.

I don't know if this proposal has been made before, and in case you find it's a good idea, where should i eventually fill a bug in ?

regards :)
G.

Something for theme core for multiple selects: use checkboxes instead of the annoying 'hold-ctrl-and-click-the-values'

example on http://www.c82.net/samples/checklist-samples.html
Maybe also with an optional 'check all' and 'uncheck all' button.

I don't think it's to hard, but for the new people, I think it would be a very nice improvement to have the option to select the locale when installing Drupal.

Given there's a botnet targeting a drupal site I am familiar with and likely others — and undoubtedly looking to leave comment spam — I'd suggest that the text Captcha module be moved into the base. I'd further suggest having at least the text Captcha configured and enabled by default for anonymous users at user registration and other core points of authentication.

As part of this, logging those clients and client attempts that fail the Captcha, including what the client entered in the Captcha input field — if anything.

And beyond what the current Captcha and Drupal login as currently implemented: the logging from failed Captcha attempts and from failed login attempts can — directly, or with an API allowing a tie-in with the login processing and with the login authentication — allow the implementation of and to trigger break-in evasion. This to allow a specified minimal number of failures to trigger a lock out a client for a specified interval, even if the client later enters a successful Captcha or successful password. Without this, a brute-force attack against the login or against the Captcha is possible. When hide-time passes, access for that client is then allowed again.

Allow to users to delete his account. We need to give a way where the users can unsusbcribe de the web.

Saludos:

Tatxe

A little story will explain my wish best.

I'm new to Drupal and set up my first trial site at http://ate.michna.com/.

I tried all kinds of Drupal's features to determine which one are useful for this particular site. As one of the last I tried the taxonomy. I didn't understand it, but I think I wouldn't need it anyway, so I cleaned out the vocabularies.

The last one was "Forums". Click—gone. Now I had got rid of my experiment.

Only later I discovered that this led to a totally unexpected, but absolutely terrible side effect—all forums had gone! I had to revert to a backup and lost everything since the last backup.

My wish should be obvious. Whenever anybody does something that is extremely difficult to undo, give him a warning first. In particular, please remove this terrible tread mine.

I guess this is easy to implement, but yields a big jump in usability.

Hans-Georg

Some of these points have already been brought up by others, I think, but here's my penny's worth.

In general, I would like to be able to reconfigure a site with fewer clicks, and lighter return trips to the server, for example and in particular:

1. Menus: I would like to be able to change the most critical menu parameters in the menu list, rather than having to click "edit", then enter the changes, then submit, for each menu item. The list could easily include for modification: menu title, menu URL, parent, and weight
2. Do the same with the categories lists in taxonomy, so that the taxonomy can easily be reordered without endless return trips
3. My web pages tend to be quite long, and in addition there is considerable overhead in loading the editor (eg TinyMCE) - so I would like to be able to change pretty much anything to do with a node (author info, publishing options, etc.) without having to load the actual content. I've already started on this a bit with the "Taxonomy switch" module, which allows you to "reclassify" a node without actually loading anything other than the taxonomy info
4. This is more an issue for CCK and Views, but I find that configuring in both these modules is desperately heavy: every time you add, remove, or move something in either of these modules, there is a return trip to the server, whereas one would like to have all that Ajaxified so that you can configure your CCK or View, and hit "submit" only at the end.

Finally, a big one: I would like to have some much easier way of reorganising the taxonomy and reclassifying articles. Classification is one of the biggest problems in any web site with a substantial amount of content and there are bound to be mistakes made. At the moment clearing up such mistakes in Drupal is next to impossible since you have to go through and reclassify all the content node by node, with return trips to the server all the time.
I did make a start on trying to provide some kind of a solution to this by developing the Freemind module which currently allows you to download an entire taxonomy with nodes into a "mind map" on your workstation: the idea is that "one day" you would be able to reclassify all the content on the workstation and load the classification system back into the site, thus completely rebuilding it - unfortunately time constraints have stopped me working on this for the moment. I'm not much of an ergonomist, so exactly how the interface would work I'm not sure, but some kind of "drag-and-drop" system for reclassifying articles would be an enormous benefit to me, at least.
I realise that this would be a big job... but you did ask!

When a user posts an item, he can fill in a form field called log message. However, these log messages disappear into the nirvana, never to be seen again.

I learned only recently that they show up when the user makes his post a new revision, but the log message input field is there also when the user chooses no new revision.

Two proposals:

1. Make the log message visible in all relevant log displays.
2. In the explanation above the input field, explain what it is good for, particularly where its contents will later show up.

Hans-Georg

I will on occasion install a module or modify a theme and my test (of course) site crashes with some strange server error. It would be nice to be able to load a file such as http://www.example.com/oops.php and gain access to certain admin features such as:

1 - turn site offline/online
2 - disable modules/block
3 - change the theme

Access control could be done as with update.php.

I think it would be faster and easier than fiddling with the database.

When users are creating a new module or after they have saved a module they are presently told that they are Submitting a 'CONTENT TYPE HERE' entry or that they have The 'CONTENT TYPE HERE' entry has been updated.

It is very awkward however when editing a large site with lots of content types to know what type of content you are editing. Users (especially new ones), need to be reminded what content type they are editing. There are ways of forcing it in, however from a usability perspective this should be the default.

Would also be nice if every time someone was editing or creating a new node that there be a popup link to the help screen for that content type - /admin/help/

Mike
--
OpenConcept | WLP | ox.ca
OO | Jean Crowder, MP

In Feature request: incentive for registration, I suggested several ways to encourage anonymous to register. More options for registered, less hassle for admin with anons. It of course makes more sense in community building (which may be as simple as a blog).

• filtered HTML
• Full HTML, greyed out. There would be a text, like This feature requires you to be registered - this is free and we won't spam you.

Other similar features that I can think of:

• No ad for regulars. Regulars don't click ads anyway (there is a post on how to do it at Performancing, but I can’t find it).
• Optional preview. Preview can be a hassle. Plus, once you’re registered, you can edit your post, so preview does not make much sense anymore.
• A new guideline for input format: no HTML. This is basically like removing all allowed HTML tags, except that you still have nother option with limited HTML tags (for now, there is only one set of allowed HTML tags)

Easy one, I’d say: Tracking a discussion without having to post in it. Post-specific RSS (like what WordPress and Dotclear are doing) is a good way to do it.

Nancy W’s Basic configuration makes much sense and should be proposed at installation time (if not set as default).

It took me some time to realise that, when writing a text, it is necessary to write a title to use the Menu settings. Before that, I just changed the Parent item, believing that it was all that had to be done. Only after several failures did I realise that Title is mandatory for menu placement to work. I later created another site, and I got stuck at the same place (granted, memory is not my forte).

Two suggestions to deal with this:

• When clicking submit, if the Parent item drop-down menu had been change and title has not been fill in, give a warning (you must select a title for the menu settings
• Assume the title in the Menu will be the same as the real title. That way, this “menu title” will be reserved for these times when one wants a specific title (space reasons come to my mind).

In the same idea, why not an option (by default or not) that simply copy the arborescence in the menu (with maybe an option for limiting to the the first x levels). I can’t see the logic behind not duplicating the structure; one expect that the menu will reflect the reality and pages which are there, but not in the menu confuse user (and admin alike, at least me), the only exception being not to display pages after a certain depth.

As much as I love the new modules page, there are a couple things that are bugging me.

1) When I want to uninstall a module and it's required by something else, it's greyed out. I understand the reasoning is because it's required but what if you are also uninstalling the module requiring it at the same time? Currently you have to uninstall first one than the other rather than unchecking them both and doing it at once. It might be better to, rather than disable the checkbox, change the look somehow so that the person knows it's required and then do a check on submit to make sure that if you unchecked a required one all the modules requiring it are also unchecked and do them in order.

2) I have a _lot_ of modules and the page is getting unwieldy. Before, they were all alphabetical. While it's nice having them in sections, it makes finding modules trickier. It would be nice if I could collapse sections that I know I'm not touching and have them stay collapsed until I open them again.

Michelle

--------------------------------------
My site: http://shellmultimedia.com

Good evening

(I just started using Drupal and it's really great - except the (sorry) WYSIWYG handling - after two days (an nights...) the Editors are *sometimes* working, depending on Browser and File-Uploading is still a strange problem. Do you know any usable Text-Only-Website?)

But you asked for simple usability suggestion: I have four of them:

» One Config-Place to define all basic file-path settings.
Some extensions would like to see /drupal/files/..., some assume(!) /files as the basic directory
and others just work and no user knows why.
Just try to change that Attachements gets into /drupal/file/attachements and IMCE should use
/drupal/file/content

I propose to define File-Classes which are used by the Modules, e.g.:
Class 1: Attachement-Directory
Class 2: Content-Directory (which usually saves Pictures used in Contents)
Class 3: Public File Directory
Class 4: Private File Directory
...

» It would be nice to have descriptions for attached Files
... and if the RSS-Feed File could be marked.

» It would be nice to have private and public attached Files
... the public files are visible for anonymous Users, the others only for registred users.

» It would really be nice to have a End-User File-Manager
So that Users can search for Attachements, Public & Private Files and download them.

Thanks a lot in advance,
kind regards,
Thomas

Make it so that RSS can be shut off for sites where RSS is not used or desired (removing the orange icons and/or eliminating the auto-generation of feeds altogether). There are hacks, but a simple admin toggle would be nice.

This thread (http://drupal.org/node/28336) was started in '05 and comments within the last couple weeks speak to this being a feature that's still not be implemented after 2 years (correct me if i'm wrong, please!)

Right now, I got a “validation error” message. It told me nothing about what was wrong so, ultimately, I decided to reset the page and it worked. Meanwhile, I would have appreciated some more information about what was going wrong.

Is integrating ranks, like in traditional fora (the more post, the higher the rank) falls in the category of legendary tasks? If not, I’d like to see it implemented.

Add the ability to use checkboxes and radio buttons in taxonomy as per:

http://drupal.org/node/84286

This seems like a minor change like the "read more" issue, but one that tons of people have asked for.

I like the idea of enabling user pictures to remind us that, ulltimately, its all about real, live people. But I only want to allow this revokable privelege to trusted members. I do NOT want some new member loading my site up with porn while I am at work. As it is, though, it is all or nothing, everybody or nobody. And so I am not comfortable using this desirable feature.

I would like the use of User Pictures to be a choice in the Access Control list that can be enabled for certain roles and denied others. And I would like the same Access Control option for "Change or Edit own Picture."

Thanks for all you guys & gals do on this,
(Unbelievable that its all FREE!)

John

In installing new modules, some depend on others. How would one automate the download and installation of it? Something similar to what yum, apt, synaptic and the likes do. Some sort of a package/module management system would be nice. If something like this already exist, I have not come across it.

Sorry for my english...
Logging in with email address would be good, email address is a unique, required, verified field - the username field is useless...
Username field doesn't needs to be a default, required, unique field... - it needs to be an user defined (unique) profile field...

I just remade my site from scratch, and before I was using a different CMS. When i shut down the site about a month ago, I figured i would create a custom CMS when it came back, but alas, the task was too much in the blur of busy that is my life. lol

The CMS i was using before was Seditio, from www.neocrome.net. One of the BEST things about it was how open ended it was, the fact that the Menu's we're TOTALLY custom, as opposed to Drupal's Menus that are only text. It had these parts of the skin you could type HTML code into, then insert them into the skin, and they'd parse like normal.

The bonus was that you could put these anywhere on the page, so you could create little Info boxes, rather then menus with them.

For instance, when a new episode was released on my site, and available for download, I would just go to the admin panel, and edit the menu that I named "New Releases" and I'd type in the HTML code to show a nice image i made along with some text talking about the episode and other such things. I like the ease of use of Drupal, but I personally feel that it's a bit close-ended with it's SET menu's and things like that. I think it's best to err on the side of a little more complexity and creativity, rather than simplicity and ease of use

sorry if this was a little off topic, but I felt admins qualify in the usability

The 5.x patch exist (only for CSS cache) ; See here : http://drupal.org/node/146611...

"Read more..." is not as search engine and user friendly as if it was "Read more about this topic...", so instead of [!--break--] it would be great to have the ability to customize read more link per node using optional extended break html comment [!--break Read more about topic...--].

Nobody will see this message, probably, but I shall write...
It is abnormal, that till now the signature is inserted static, instead of dynamic

Here the module which it corrects and in which there is a good opportunity of switching-off of the signature: http://drupal.org/project/signature

Nobody will see this message, probably, but I shall write...
It is abnormal, that till now the signature is inserted static, instead of dynamic

Here the module which it corrects and in which there is a good opportunity of switching-off of the signature: http://drupal.org/project/signature

Hello,

This feature would be great. It can be such a pain having access to Mysql.

I think WordPress has this feature, and there's SPIP, a CMS which I don't like very much though I have been using it for my Libre-Fan website but which has the great advantage of enabling DB backup and restoration, either locally or online very easily. You need an FTP client to backup or restore the DB. Then the file can be donwloaded with Gftp (or antoher FTP client) from your install dir to your local DD. So you can keep it in a safe place or use it in another install, locally or inline.
---
Libres-Ailé(e)s (Association for Linux and libre software) (France, Cévennes)

Hello,

This feature would be great. It can be such a pain having access to Mysql.

I think WordPress has this feature, and there's SPIP, a CMS which I don't like very much though I have been using it for my Libre-Fan website but which has the great advantage of enabling DB backup and restoration, either locally or online very easily. You need an FTP client to backup or restore the DB. Then the file can be downloaded with Gftp (or anoher FTP client) from your install dir to your local DD. So you can keep it in a safe place or use it in another install, locally or inline.
---
Libres-Ailé(e)s (Association for Linux and libre software) (France, Cévennes)

Hi,

Drupal has always been very user-friendly. If this functionality is also there, it would make it even awesome.

The backup module currently allows one to backup and restore the ENTIRE site via the browser. I would like to suggest a similar functionality that works for PARTIAL migration.

Below is the background:
For a large scale site, apart from the PUBLIC site, there is a development environment (DEV) for developing purpose. Some even have a TEST environment purely for testing.

Most of the content development will be done in parallel by different developers. Say, for example, someone is building a new content type using CCK for a directory system while someone else is customising the view for another module. It is very rare that development will finish at the same time.

When one of the development is done, that developer will want to test it in an independent environment (say in TEST). If there is PARTIAL migration functionality, one can then select the new content type just built and migrate across to the TEST environment, without having to backup and restore the ENTIRE website (Mind you that other people's development is still progressing).

There are two challenges of this PARTIAL migration functionality:

• to package all of the dependency of the selected item
• while migrating to the new environment, either overwrite the target, or be smart enough to merge with it (when the table is shared with other items)

Please let me know if such functionality already exists.

Regards,
Alex

I've used Drupal for less than 48 hours, and there are only 2 things I would change: yes, it's the big stuff: WYSIWYG editor and better image upload and insertion.

Sorry, but I'd rather see the developers stop working on the small stuff and solve these. If these are the only 2 improvements in v. 6, it will have more value to users than 50 smaller tweaks. After all, who should the improvements benefit most, if not the ordinary user?

Related to the thread (from way earlier) around the disconnect between terminology in the UI and URLs and/or exposing the backend through the UI, I'd like the pager fixed. Pager URLs are zero based which means, for example, when you click on "2" you get a url like "?page=1" this confuses non technical users. Some users do look at the location bar for orientation purposes, especially with clean urls.

What I would like to see are access keys for commonly used form elements such as "Submit", "Preview" etc. They are done with the accesskey attribute and would allow for easier navigation and quicker access to common form controls without having to tab to them. For example, if in this comment, the Preview button had an access key of alt+p (p is the value for the accesskey attribute), I could press Alt+P straight from the edit area, without having to press TAB twice to get to the Preview Comment button.

Marco

Admin RSS

Something like it: http://drupal.org/project/adminrss - a RSS for the comment approval queue and a RSS of unpublished nodes.

Easy to do, nice usability improvement for administrators.

A lot of people create websites where they know the structure of the site ahead of time OR they don't know the content of their site but want to start from the ground up by entering their content at a later day and just get all the content-stubs in place to modify at a later date. This may go back to the draft of a node feature but this would allow people to organize their sites w/o having to enter any real content/required fields ahead of time.

... on the localisation page (similar to the links provided by the update_status.module) would simplify finding the right .po files and would reduce the number of clicks required on d.o.. It seems to me that this would be relatively easy to accomplish.

Ideally, it would be even better to provide actual download links but I believe that this can't be accomplished until the translations have associated .info files.

Please kill create content. It kills me. So much.

Reasoning:

1. Does any user go to your site thinking in his head "I'd like to create content!"

2. Do you ever post to a forum without first looking at the forum?

3. Are drill down menus - nay - pages (would you like to create a. b. or c.?) usable?

Quite a simple one, I'm sure - and something I tend to correct within the theme...

All links should make sense out of context. So the "read more" links for teasers should actually say "read more of [node title]".

For visual users, who get plenty of context from the position of "read more" below the article, showing the node title would be adding clutter. So the node title would need to be wrapped in a span so it could be hidden in an accessible way using style-sheets. For example:

<div class="read-more">
<a href="node/1">Read more about <span>Accessible Links</span></a>
</div>

<!-- the CSS code to hide this might be:
div.read-more a span {
  position: absolute;
  top: -1000em;
  /* this method for hiding will ensure the full link is
      read out by "broken" screen-readers like JAWS  */
}
 -->

Mark
flet.org

Drupal really needs the equivalent of /admin/content/node for user oriented content management, i.e. so in the navigation menu under "Create Content" there should be a "Manage My Content" maybe with sub menu's for each different content type.

Also, Drafting is a feature that can no longer be done without. There needs to be buttons for and a (and maybe ?). The whole post saving architecture could do with improvement, so that tools like content moderation could hook into the save system, and make the rather be etc. so users know where the content is going, and what they can and cannot do.

An optional field for a manual teaser would be great too, i.e. nodes have and and if teaser is blank then it makes a teaser from the body, or the teaser is greyed out by default until a tickbox is checked (much like how contemplate doesn't change content output until you tell it to). Custom teasers are very appealing for a few cases.

Hi

this may seem a really silly suggestions ... but

Had You ever tried to fill a form or long post and then by accident destroyed Your work, just because the post button was not were You thought it should be ...

To end this chaos, which is,

some modules have send button on the left others on the right ...

please think about a way for the site designer to decide the order or position of buttons.

Can this be done in core, or is this only possible at module level. ...

Thanks for Your attention
and greeting from sunny Central America ...

Roland
http://www.centroamerica.tv

I've been working in IT for 25 years, and I tend to think I'm a pretty quick learner - until I encounter something like Drupal.

You guys really must be a lot sharper than I am. What you refer to as a "learning curve" is absolutely beyond me.

I've put about 20 hours in (really), tweaking files and reading forum posts here - reinstalled 5.2 three times and 4.7.7 once, and of course the mySQL database... and I still can't get the rid of the file system error messages. My hosting provider's head tech guy seems really sharp, and he says he's mystified.
I just can't spare an unknowable number of additional hours to learn how to get this software installed successfully. It looks very powerful, and obviously many people have mastered the curve with great success, but I only have a week to spare and am regretfully going to try e107 (after I get some sleep).
With so many Drupal fans in evidence I'm not going to maintain that the problem is anywhere other than "between my own ears". It does seem, though, that the general concept of a "learning curve" around here is significantly different than my own use of that term in relation to JavaScript or XML or Perl.

The current naming scheme ("picture-[uid].[extension]") should be extended with a unique id or portion of the uploaded filename. The current scheme causes difficulties with imagecache. Example: displaying a profile list with thumbnails and a full profile page with larger images currently requires that the imagecache preset is flushed, AND that the end user refreshes the browser cache. Simply changing the filename scheme could improve this.

Taxonomy is a very poweful way to organise content, however its full potential is not met due to insufficient presentation.
A taxonomy based navigation menu would be greatly appriciated. Atleast integration of the taxonomy_menu module [currently not available for 6.x] into the core would be good.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cheers, shaunak.

The new Digg menu is highly usable.

Take a look at http://digg.com/news/technology. Try to click on the down arrows to the right of each menu item on the top strip and you will see a menu folding down, with sub menus folding down as well. Also, all the contents of the menu are displayed in the second horizontal strip.

Improving the drupal core navigation to create a digg-like menu would be fantastic - it's very high usability.

Do you know of a drupal menu which is currently doing something similar?

Amnon
_{-
Professional: Drupal Israel | Drupal Development & Consulting | בניית אתרים
Personal: Hitech Dolphin: Regain Simple Joy :)}

Many discussions on ethics ... but many designers want to be able to choose to open a new window/tab or not. Filtering everything that begins with http: isn't that helpfull, it should be selectable per menu item.

e.g. For a company Intranet portal I want to create menu items that start with http: but open then in the drupal site because they are small enough to fit. At the other hand, I have pages (in Drupal) with huge tables that I would prefer to open in a new window to gain some space.

When it is possible to enter html code it's no problem but in menu items you can't. Now I work around it with a block but I would like to handle all menu's in the menu admin.

Hope my which is small enough to make a chance.