Rename "default theme" to something that is easier to understand

Problem with "active" is the subtle difference between "active" and "enabled", and that Drupal can have many enabled/active themes. "Active" doesn't tell me this is the theme that will show by default, say if a user hasn't chosen their own default, or that some module is not switching the theme for a site section, for example.

"Current" has no meaning to me. To me the "current" theme is the one you're looking at, in which in many/most cases will be Seven (for example).

ATM the text reads:

"Enable and set default"

What if it said...

"Enable and set as default theme"

Possibly this would make more sense?

Jeff, the underlying issue is that people do not understand the subtle difference between "Enabled" and "Active" right off the bat. I think, the issue is not just about renaming the label but also some visual hierarchy changes to the page (which will take a while to implement) :(

We need some clarification here on what the actual issue is, now I'm confused because this seems like two issues:

1. Low comprehension the phrase "default theme".
2. #2 seems to pointing at the user not knowing which theme is default.

This is a sub issue of #1167444: Not clear which themes are enabled and disabled

It would be good if we could have meta issues that tracked all the related issues, it feels like there are lots of issues with cross over and even look like strait duplicates. Some of these issues need major architectural and design discussions.

I think that 90% the sites will have just one theme as enabled and default, so the option to have multiple themes enabled could be an optional feature? Or at least the exposed interface to do that?

How about if there is only one "active" theme. Remove the idea of enabled themes in the config page and the code.

I'm a bit behind on why we still have "enabled" themes. It used to be for providing a list of user selectable themes from their account settings page in previous versions. What's using it now? And can it be moved to the user permission page if that list needs to be available?

Oh, and that list is used to expose the theme settings but that'll need a revamp too so I have no issues with ripping it apart.

Let's mark this post as duplicate of #1167444: Not clear which themes are enabled and disabled and concentrate discussions on the main issue.

Also, meta issues would be great, but we would need to post (or do a follow up) on an existing issue to make it possible on d.o.

There's like 4 issues that all appear to say basically the same thing in a different way - any chance UX peeps could sort this out please, its getting very confusing what we're supposed to be looking at.

Jeff,

There is a subtle differences between each of the issues which otherwise sound the same. I guess, we did not do a good job articulating it :(

We will get this sorted out!

As far as I understand, this issue was supposed to be about terminology only, and therefore is not a duplicate of other issues.

In other words, the proposal here is basically to replace the phrase "default theme" with "______ theme" everywhere it occurs in Drupal, and that's it. I'm retitling it to hopefully make that crystal clear, and reopening it :)

Note that according to the Issues Analysis Matrix this was not really a major issue (only affected two out of eight participants, P3 and P6, and neither of them in an overwhelming way) but I think we all have a gut feeling that we can do better than "default" here.

I agree with Jeff's arguments as to why neither "active" nor "current" will work. Here are a couple other possibilities:

• "Main site theme"
  [I kind of cringe to type that, though, because it can be misread in a way that will mislead people about how Drupal actually works]
• "Primary theme"

+1 to "Primary theme"

How about changing "default" to "Main" theme?

"Main" is definitely more straightforward +1

I suggest we do a quick test of this with a few variations.

So far we have:

• Main
• Primary
• Current
• Active

I would add:

• Live
• Published
• Deployed

Published has the added benefit of following an established pattern, and having an established flow. It would make the action "Enable and publish". Deployed would have a similar verb, verb syntax "Save and Deploy" that unambiguously says the theme will be visible to the public, unlike "enable and set default" which many might read as "enable and make this the theme that the site falls back to if the main theme fails".

I think we can safely exclude "Primary" and "Main" because cardinality does not necessarily equate to visibility (I may think I could make my "secondary" theme the live one). I would also exclude "current" because it's temporal and might suggest that it's the current theme visible to me but not necessarily to the public. "Active" has a similar problem but to a lesser degree so I would still include it.

"Primary", "Main", and "Current" also suffer from producing links that are longer and in the passive voice, eg. "Enable and set as Primary". "Active" could be active voice, but "Enable and activate".sounds redundant. "Live" also produces passive voice but I don't think we'd want "Enable and animate" or "Enable and switch on".

The rest are unambiguous but we should test which is the best. The test can be as simple as:

• screenshot the UI
• make different versions with the different nomenclature
• show to users unfamiliar with Drupal
• ask: if you clicked this link [the action link] what will happen?
• ask: who can see the theme then?
• ask: will everyone who visits the site see that theme?
• ask: which themes are enabled?
• ask: which theme is visible to the public?
• ask: how would you enable a theme?
• ask: how would you make a theme the one that your site displays in?
• show one version per user (after seeing one the problem becomes obvious)
• Tally the results

The text for the versions of the action link would be:

• Enable and publish
• Enable and deploy
• Enable and make live
• Enable and make active

And "Enable and set default" as the control.