By olderguy on
I always thought a picture told a thousand words. But here on Drupal it seems graphics are a no no. I mean everything from the help pages to the handbook are completely devoid of graphics, why is that?
I always thought a picture told a thousand words. But here on Drupal it seems graphics are a no no. I mean everything from the help pages to the handbook are completely devoid of graphics, why is that?
Comments
No
Sometimes, as with your original post, a person doesn't need to say a thousand words! Drupal is more or less a technical site and it's quite difficult to convey technical information using an image without spending considerable time preparing it.
Can you think of any examples where an image would be useful?
Perhaps to a programmer or
Perhaps to a programmer or someone with programming wherewithal, source code is a picture. I did, however, find a lot of graphical info in the handbook regarding taxonomy (the handbook for Modules and Features; I hit the printer friendly link and printed out all 117 pages of that handbook).
I don't find a great deal of help here in general for mainstream non-programming types like myself (I can hack a bit but not much more). I search and find my almost exact question already asked, often more than once, and not a single reply. As mentioned, things are pretty technical around here and not particularly typical of user guides and responses I'm more familiar with.
They put the program out through Fantastico and every cheapo $6 a month hosting service makes it as easy as two mouse clicks to install Drupal. Consequently thousands of people, many if not most, of whom are not as technically or programmatically savvy as the core body of Drupal activists fire it up, like what it purports, and then get stuck in a rut trying to get it to their specs. Unfortunately there isn't a place where the less technical gather to help each other out. For some of us, coming here is like hitting the experts ski slope before one is quite ready. IMHO. :)
Go ahead and create screen shots/graphics
Post them to the documentation issue queue, stating which page they should be associated with (along with text re-write if required). One of the site admins can easily add them, but it requires people to actually sit down and make them first.
have you seen the webcasts?
I don't think these are cleanly linked in from the handbook, but are highlighted on the front page:
http://drupal.org/node/61334
I also get frustrated by the some of the documentation (or lack thereof), but one thing that's important to note is that you and I can submit documentation pages wherever clarification or more information is needed.
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Work: BioRAFT
"I don't find a great deal
"I don't find a great deal of help here in general for mainstream non-programming types like myself"
I agree if you don't know jack about code the Drupal site might as well say piss off designers.
"have you seen the webcasts?"
I am on dail up
"Go ahead and create screen shots/graphics Post them to the documentation issue queue"
Why waste my time images are not what they want.
"I don't find a great deal
Hm. Looks like you missed the rest of pwolanin's post. The only way the documentation improves is if we each identify areas that are unclear and write up pages as we learn stuff. I did this when I was first learning my way around Drupal (these docs were mostly developer-centred though), and it's an excellent way to give back to the community!
I'm one of the site admins, and also on the documentation team, which I guess that makes me one of "they." I'd love to see more images in the handbook, and only wish I had more time to do so! So if you're serious about getting the situation improved, please go ahead and create these images so that we can add them to the appropriate pages.
I'll be watching the issue queue! :)
If desiring to understand
If desiring to understand that *many* building a Drupal site are not as yet fluent with Drupal and may never be fluent with programming, then maybe Drupal.Org could provide at least some technical support. As far as I can tell, there is zero tech support for Drupal. I noticed a variety of departments, such as Documentation. Perhaps a volunteer group of people comfortable with tech support could head a tech support department and monitor the forum for support purposes. (By "comfortable with tech support" I am referring to the patience needed and desire to be instructively helpful that is required in being a good tech support person.) I can no longer log into my site as Admin via Internet Explorer. I found numerous others with the same problem(s) when I searched and any number of those posts have gone unresponded to, including mine. I would think the single most important issue would be inability to log in as Admin. I can't offhand think of any matter more important, it could render Drupal unreliable, unpredictable, or flat out unusable. I've read all the posts I could find that did have replies and nothing helped. It's rather frustrating no longer being able to log in as Admin albeit fortunately I can do so via different browser. If there was a group of tech support hawks on the prowl looking for such postings, along with help in trying to resolve them, the forums can become more effectively helpful.
I asked if anyone has a suggestion on a way to put a line break in a node title. Pretty simple question. Not a single response. Understandable, perhaps, because no one else has apparently wanted to do the same thing. But if there's a group of tech support volunteers, such questions won't go unanswered even if there is no good suggestion on how to do something (at least that would be an answer and could well pique the interest of someone else who just might have a solution or theory). Many questions might be sophomoric or irrelevant to the veteran user so they go unanswered but it's not sophomoric to the person asking and a volunteer group of tech support souls wouldn't be qualifying questions based on their own personal interests in the program.
If there is an interest to try to be helpful to the tens of thousands of people Drupal is being mass marketed to, it would behoove to understand that many of us are not proficient with an answer like, "Easy fix, just create a Switch,") or such-like. (Which too is at least an answer and could possibly get something going more helpful.) I have a company discussion board, phpBB, and one of the nav links that comes with it is "View Unanswered Posts" which company staff voluntarily often click to help clear out whatever they can that's thus far gone unanswered. Might be handy to have a similar link here since posts wind up pushed off the radar by recent posts.
free/open source means...
...to me that there is no tech support except for what we ourselves provide to each other. If you want to be assured that your questions are always answered in a timely fashion, you'll need to pay someone.
I understand your frustration, but IMO you need to buy into Drupal.org as a community endeavor to understand how it actually works. As soon as I happened upon a a forum question that I could answer, I did. However, I also have the humility to know that at best 50% of my answers will be helpful.
If you think there is a bug regarding sessions in IE, and you've seen lots of posts about it that are not being addressed, then collect links to those and file bug report: http://drupal.org/project/issues
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Work: BioRAFT
You forgot
include as much detail as posible. If developers are unable to repeat the bug, then it is not fixable.
Most IE issue's are, local security settings preventing cookies, not a Drupal issue. Theming issue's involving css stuff (usually floats). If you can log in with one browser and not a different one, then it most likely is a local browser problem .
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
Ummm
People do what they can. There are people scanning the forums to help out - I have about 20 pages of threads in my tracker doing just that. I see a bunch of other regulars doing the same thing. I do wonder why I still do it though - it does severely eat into the time I can spend doing my own stuff on Drupal (or my real work for that matter).
There will always be many many more questions that what you can sit through. Is it better to help 5 or 10 more people solve a problem by quickly pointing them in the right direction, or spend that same time just helping just one person? Also when you have to quickly browse through a list of questions to answer with your limited time, you tend to pick the ones where someone has gone to the trouble of helping you out by providing good details of the problem or a clear explanantion of what they want to acheive.
And frankly the one thing I've learnt from Tech Support in previous jobs, is that the more hand holding you provide the more it is expected and the less effort the users go to before mindlessly asking for help. Guidance is a much better long term prospect than hand holding. Helping the person figure out and solve their own problem rather than solving it for them gives them a sense of ownership and greater confidence in their own abilities to solve future problems.
--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Forum posting tips | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example Knowledge Base built using Drupal
Docs
You're looking at it from a strange angle.
I think that it would reflect more on the amount of contributions from 'designers' (to use your word) than from the 'coders' (to continue your artificial separation of the two). To correct the imbalance either 'designers' will have to contribute more docs or the 'coders' will have to contribute less. And frankly the latter option is just crazy. Should we somehow force the current contributors to do more in areas where they aren't as skilled, or would getting more contributors be a better idea? People in the Drupal community write the docs they want to or that they feel are really needed. Maybe 'designers' just aren't as generous with helping out their fellow users?
Yes, I'm being a sarcastic troll. I have no issue at all with the amount 'designers' in the Drupal community are contributing. Every contribution is valuable, and most people have no appreciation of just how much effort that goes into making them.
People will always feel that the majority of the information isn't aimed at them, no matter what stage they are at or what part of the system they are working in. And that's because it isn't - there are so many skill levels represented here, and functions of the application and so many different things people are using Drupal for that you will only ever have a tiny part of it aimed at satisfying your current situation.
--
Anton
New to Drupal? | Forum posting tips | Troubleshooting FAQ
Example Knowledge Base built using Drupal
No
There are quite a few images in the handbook
Please read: http://drupal.org/forum-posting
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
sepeck wrote "There are
sepeck wrote
"There are quite a few images in the handbook"
I have been through about a 100 pages of the handbook, yet to see even 1 image.
sepeck wrote
"Please read: http://drupal.org/forum-posting"
Hmm... Which part? maybe this one:
"You get more bees with honey than with vinegar. While it is very easy to become frustrated when grappling with a problem, remember that Drupal community members donate their time in offering support. People are more likely to respond to posts which ask nicely for assistance over those that demand it or complain. Politeness can make a difference.""
"While it is very easy to become frustrated",
Yes it is. I will try to upload an example of how an image is worth a thousand words, by showing how easy it is to change a templates logo and its background colour, and where to change it in the css file of the given template. but alas images are not allowed to be uploaded by Drupal.org
Misconception...
"Yes it is. I will try to upload an example of how an image is worth a thousand words, by showing how easy it is to change a templates logo and its background colour, and where to change it in the css file of the given template. but alas images are not allowed to be uploaded by Drupal.org"
In addition to the run-of-the-mill "nuisance" kind of things that people can potentially do with uploaded images, like showing animal porn images or inlining 6MB Jpegs and the like, there are also potential security implications around allowing all users to upload inline-displayed images on a whim (tracking users without their knowledge/consent with 1px x 1px web bugs, any of the various "loading an image will cause the browser to crash" bugs present in unpatched versions of Internet Explorer, etc.) Therefore, the ability to post images inside content like forum posts and book pages is limited to site admins.
Issues, however, can have almost any type of file uploaded to them, and it is here where you should put your screenshots, so someone with proper permissions can get them added.
Still hoping to see some documentation project issues from you! :)
"In addition to the
"In addition to the run-of-the-mill "nuisance" kind of things that people can potentially do with uploaded images, like showing animal porn images or inlining 6MB Jpegs and the like, there are also potential security implications around allowing all users to upload inline-displayed images on a whim (tracking users without their knowledge/consent with 1px x 1px web bugs, any of the various "loading an image will cause the browser to crash" bugs present in unpatched versions of Internet Explorer, etc.) Therefore, the ability to post images inside content like forum posts and book pages is limited to site admins."
On my board all images are displayed "image pending approval" until one the moderators gives it the okay. Images uploaded reside in a pending-approval section and any moderator can give the section a quick look to approve/decline a pending upload. I'd say more damage can be done with a malicious hyperlink than anything a picture can do and there doesn't seem to be anything filtering out link references (nor should there be).
a useful adddition
@happycamper: That functionality sounds useful (making images pending). How did you implement it under Drupal?
Also, I concur with the idea of making img uploads available when adding handbook pages. Forgive me if I'm missing something, but I thought all the handbook pages already go into a moderation queue?
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Work: BioRAFT
"That functionality sounds
"That functionality sounds useful (making images pending). How did you implement it under Drupal?"
It's not a Drupal board.
There are not quite a 1000
There are not quite a 1000 pages in the handbook and I will freely admit it's not imge heavy, but it doesn;t need to be. An image should be an aid, supplement or expansion on the text.
If you have an image to upload, webchick already answered your question on HOW to get images added. Perhpas you missed her comment? It's here: http://drupal.org/node/63731#comment-120468
Meanwhile, sarcasm that is incorrect merely indicates that you are mad and want to complain because as you can see by webchicks comment
So that statement is, well, inaccurate.
We have a mechanism to get images onto the site. Perhaps you missed it because she didn't include a picture? Now see, how did my last sentence help the issue any? Sarcasm doesn't help, nor does alllowing your frustrations to get the better of you. It does affect who will answer your questions though.
Please feel free to create an issue to go with your article, upoad your image and we'll get it in for you.
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
agreed
i think img should be allowed for anyone to use. abusers of img are just like abusers of text. they get warned and then booted.
ditto
but:
#284424: Add img tag to filtered HTML
#856674: Add img tag to list of allowed tags in filtered html
#285011: User would like input format changed to allow images in a case study in drupal showcase forum
re: webchick's concern about tracking, could it be limited to allow only images from http(s)://*.drupal.org
lack of support & images
There are two issues in this thread, both relating to what Dries said in State of Durpal in London. On is lack of images. Definitely weakens the marketing aspect of drpal.org, which is related to what Dries said in State of Drupal, comparing Wordpress site.
Lack of tech support for non-coders. It is true. If you don't know PHP and the Drupal API, and if you come up with a basic question here, the chances of an answer are hit and miss. I have answered a few beginners' questions lately because I am aware it can be tough being there.
The community needs more people who are not focussed on writing code, and Dries in effect said this too: he made special reference to marketing. And there is a bit a feeling that the people who design and code the software are the 'insiders' in Drupal. I am not sure what can be done to make people with other skills feel equally valued and included, but it woud benefit the community if something could be done to broaden it. Looking at my own possible contirbution for a moment, I am not going to provide graphics. I will carry on answering basic questions in an accessible way when I have time.
At the end of the day, Drupal is not ideal for the small amateur website builder with only a rudimentary grasp of CMS and how to use a hosting account. Wordpress does everything you need easily, with loads of beginners' level support. Maybe Drupal should stick to the more complex tasks where in many cases it is by far the best solution out there. But whatever level of site Drupal is used for, non-coders are still needed in the community, and should be made to feel equally important as the software engineers.
Digit Professionals specialising in Drupal, WordPress & CiviCRM support for publishers in non-profit and related sectors