Come together with the global Drupal community in Rotterdam, 28 Sept – 1 Oct 2026. Sessions, contribution, connection, and Early Bird savings until 8 June.Most of this patch is pretty easy to change (CSS) on the theme layer but I think it is something other users are going to want.
- Changes "Edit" link text to "[Configure]".
- Changes CSS to match Views exactly including nested font-sizes
| Comment | File | Size | Author |
|---|---|---|---|
| block_edit-views_css.patch | 2.37 KB | psynaptic |
Comments
Comment #1
irakli commentedViews links are pretty ugly. Why should our links look like them? :)
Comment #2
buddaChanging the text links to be consistent with other popular modules would be nice. CSS can be changed by others i suppose.
Comment #3
psynaptic commentedViews and Panels both use the same links and they are not ugly; they are functional.
It looks rather silly to have big, light blue edit links with dashed borders hovering over the top of the block header. Using any colour is a bad idea in the first place since all themes will have different colours, and dashed borders? Can you give a good reason why we shouldn't change the appearance of these links to follow suit with Views and Panels, 2 of the most popular Drupal modules?
Please can we increase the usability of this module by providing some consistency in the UI?
Comment #4
irakli commented1. Views and Panels are written by the same people, so the fact that they use similar link styles in both cases is not an argument.
2. The style they use is not good because it does not have a background color. Therefore depending on the color scheme of the theme it may or may not be clearly visible. Block edit uses link background so it is clearly visible in any theme. Specific color my be arguable or the dashed border may be changed for solid, but it should have a background color contrasting enough with the link color.
3. In many cases (on views blocks) both their original link and block_edit link appear at the same time and it is crucial that they do not look the same, otherwise it will get all messed up.
This change would decrease usability, instead of increasing it.
Comment #5
psynaptic commentedThe point is consistency of UI. It's not that the Views' and Panels' links are perfect, just that having 2 different types of links effectively doing the same thing is confusing for new users. All our clients are new users and easing their learning curve is one of our primary goals.
I you don't like the way Views and Panels present their admin links then please do file a patch. It is the only way to get it resolved. You have a good point about the background colour but this can be changed on a project-by-project basis if the default link styling doesn't fit with the theme.
I'm just aiming for consistency in the UI. Surely this is a goal we should all have?
Your final point is solved by my patch. I move the Configure link above the block so that it acts like Views' edit links (above the actual item it is editing).
Comment #6
chriscohen commentedI'm all in favour of consistency in the interface. Views has been around for a very long time, and in general sets a good example. I would be quite supportive of going down the views route for this case.
Comment #7
stella commented+1 for the patch. I quite like the Views way of providing the config links and would be in favour of making the 'block edit' links similar in UI. I haven't checked, but I think the Zen theme also implements block configuration links in a fashion similar to Views links.
Comment #8
irakli commentedpsynaptic,
can you, please, make and post a screenshot of how does the redesigned link look on a
1. custom block
2. a Views block (which has its own "edit" link generated by Views (this is the one that worries me the most)
thx
Comment #9
psynaptic commentedNo problem. I should have done this in the first place!
Custom block - block hover state
Custom block - block edit link hover state
Views block - views admin links hover state
Views block - block edit link hover state
Comment #10
irakli commentedThank you, psynaptic.
Given that this works in all major browsers and if everybody thinks this is a better way - we can change it, but I still think we should at least give the link white bgcolor. This link will be virtually invisible in a dark background theme and that does not sound too fair.
Comment #11
psynaptic commentedThanks irakli,
I agree that the situation you've highlighted is a real issue. When I do a light on dark theme I tend to redo the whole theme and would give the block edit links a different colour rather than a light coloured background. In my opinion this would look better but maybe we should have some sort of "skin" feature for all Drupal hover links. We could start by providing a patch to Views and Panels and see what the rest of the community think about it.
It would be very simple to have multiple stylesheets inside this module and have a setting in admin to control which is displayed. Do you have any other ideas or maybe just a tendency to which of the above you prefer?
Comment #12
psynaptic commentedThis has been committed to DRUPAL-6--1: http://drupal.org/cvs?commit=216906
Thanks to everyone in this thread!