Personal battle plans for Drupal 7

Dries - January 31, 2008

With Drupal 6.0 around the corner and after a 6 month code freeze, it is time for us developers to start talking about the next version of Drupal. If you plan to work on something, or if you are going to contribute to Drupal in one way or another, please share your "personal battle plan" in the comments. A "personal battle plan" is a summary or itemized list of things you are going to work on in the next couple months.

Important guidelines

In this thread, we are only interested in what you plan to contribute, and not what you'd like other people to work on. Please, do NOT post personal wishlists and refrain from theorizing or sharing your grand vision. This is not the place to request features, to talk about implementation details or to discuss Drupal's general direction. This thread is meant to be a collection of things people are actually going to work on. If you are not going to contribute, don't post any comments. Comments that violate these guidelines, in part or in full, will be deleted. Thanks for your understanding.

Usability + QA

webchick - January 31, 2008

Data API
If you asked me this a few months ago, I would've said that the Data API was my primary itch to scratch for Drupal 7, but with the advent of the Drupal Data Architecture Design Sprint and all the wicked smart kids involved with that, I'm confident that not only will that itch get scratched in Drupal 7, it'll be covered in a nice, soothing balm. ;) I'll still be following that progress though and attempting to help however I can.

Usability
A couple months ago, my wife wanted a blog, and naturally I installed Drupal for her. ;) Watching her struggle to make her way around the administration panel in Drupal was truly a mind-opening experience, since she is sharp and very Internet-savvy, and hammered home more than anything else has that we have a bit of a ways to go in that department. ;) Since I truly believe that Drupal will save the world, an important first step is making it usable by mere mortals.

At the end of February, I'll be attending the first-ever Drupal usability testing (in, like, a lab and everything!) at the University of Minnesota, along with a few others from the community. I intend to use this experience to frame a more concrete "battle plan" for usability in D7 and beyond.

Automated testing
Thorough patch reviewers such as catch are valued community treasures, and another big focus for me is making sure we treat their time as though it were measured in gold.

This means continuing work on SimpleTest module, as well as the automated testing stuff that Rok, Chad, and others are working on. My ultimate goal is for "patch (code needs review)" to mean exactly that: patches that make it to this stage a) don't break Drupal in some horrible way (at least that we know about yet ;)), and b) aren't so old that they don't even apply anymore. So reviewers can do actual /reviewing/ -- does the code make sense? is this the optimal way to go about this? as I was going through, did I discover some new failure point for which we don't have test coverage yet? etc.

General nit-picky webchick-esque things
The usual cleaning up APIs that make no sense, further refining our coding standards and improving tools like Coder to catch problems, obliterating messy, notice-generating code (perhaps even E_STRICT compliance), cleaning up goofy database anomalies that make no sense, and other stuff like that. You know, the stuff no one else cares about? ;)

Back

kika - January 31, 2008

First of all, I'd like to come back to Drupal family again, uid=11 puts a certain responsibility on you. Even if you have be far away you always have your roots planted somewhere.

So, for D7 I try to approach Drupal design with fresh outsider eye (but still aware how it all came to be) and try to:

• simplify the UI as much as possible, cut/hide all unnecessary noise. Find a way to fight against "this is not a wordpress, this is drupal" syndrome, stress the importance of clear UI, smooth flow, intuitivness is universal goal, not only for novice users.
• help to set up UI pattern library - for core to implement, for module devs to follow
• help on D7 big UI challenges: CCK/Views light in core, Blocks/Panels overhaul, GAnalyticsified/Feedburnerified/Mintified stats ;)
• help to set Drupal icons/gfx language: it is really easy to mess up here, overpizazz it. Try to keep it as simple and generic possible, use smart (unicode?) tricks etc.
• not to be a theme coder any more (need to let old cranky Bluemarine and Chameleon go from the core).
• help to make drupal.org a taj-mahal.org

this is not a wordpress, this is drupal

chx - January 31, 2008

Interesting how my words are being used and twisted out of their meaning. What I meant is, and I will stand by that -- Drupal is much more configurable than WordPress. On a larger scale, this simple means Drupal is more powerful. Don't see a "syndrome" to "fight against" here.
--
The news is Now Public | Drupal development: making the world better, one patch at a time. | A bedroom without a teddy is like a face without a smile. |

Agreed

kika - February 1, 2008

just when it comes to user interface, we have an extra load on our shoulders to expose that power without compromising clarity and not overwhelming users. Sorry for twisting your words.