Create an Awesome U.I. [#221492]

First of all, this module is SOOOO cool! I'm going to post a bunch of feature requests and issues just to keep track of all of my excitement around it, so please don't take them as criticism -- just excitement.

First of all, I think that the popup form could use an overhaul. I think we can get it to look a LOT more like Quicksilver's "bezel" interface and I'm thinking of how we could do that.

It's really too bad that there isn't more iconography in Drupal because the application icons really make a big part of the visual feedback in Quicksilver. Maybe we could sort of fudge this functionality with different types of icons for different node types or menu items based on their context (for instance admin menu items look one way and 'create content' items look another). I'm also thinking about Canvas as a way of creating the popup element sort of similar to this demo of some Moo tools stuff. It's really powerful and a cool way to do things like rounded corners. I thought about using that for the user interface for Theme Developer, but ended up just doing it the conventional way.

Anyway, I'd love to offer some help in this area. I think we can do some crazy stuff with CSS on the form elements to make it not feel so "formy". I do think the entire autocomplete Javascript might need to be rewritten to work more Quicksilver-y... but that's a different issue. :-)

Comments

Comment #1

incidentist commented 14 February 2008 at 01:02

Awesome, thanks! Participation is totally welcome.

I think we can get it to look a LOT more like Quicksilver's "bezel" interface and I'm thinking of how we could do that.

Part of me wants that, but part of me is happy with the current compromise, which is to structure the elements in such a way that the form meshes naturally with the theme, for consistency. Quicksilver gets to have one flashy interface because it only needs to integrate with one environment (OS X). Like, that Mocha stuff looks AMAZING, but would it look that good against a Garland page? Not to mention the effort required to get it to look right on different browsers that could be better spent on functionality. I wonder if there's a way to integrate with the color module so that it can look flashy but retain the color scheme of the site.

Totally agree about the icons. Again, I wish themes could define a standard icon set for different, um, types of stuff (I was about to say 'content types' but users, menu items, taxonomy terms, etc aren't content types) so that Teleport could have icons but still look consistent. I suppose at some point I'll have to stop worrying so much about visual consistency but I'm not quite there yet. :)

So those are the kinds of tradeoffs I'm thinking about. What do you think? I'd love to hear more about what you have in mind. I had the idea for months before I got around to writing it, so it's been awhile since I looked at the design with fresh eyes.

Comment #2

jjeff commented 14 February 2008 at 01:15

Yes, I agree that you can probably find better things to do than to harp on beautifying the popup...

However, *I* have been known to really waste my time on these types of things! :-)

I'm going to mess around with it a bit and see what I can come up with. I don't think we need to worry about how it looks "against a given theme". Like Theme Developer module, I'll do it so that it can be overridden with theme-based CSS.

No promises, but I'll see if I can whip together an idea in the next few days.

Again though, a big problem is just the way that Drupal's autocomplete works... I can be very imaginative though!

Comment #3

thomas23@drupal.org commented 4 June 2008 at 22:25

Re: Again, I wish themes could define a standard icon set for different, um, types of stuff (I was about to say 'content types' but users, menu items, taxonomy terms, etc aren't content types) so that Teleport could have icons but still look consistent.

That I would greatly welcome!

Edit: Just saw this module for 5.x called icontheme. I thought it meight be usefull and I'd share it.