Icon Module

 Description

The Icon module will add a central system for icons in Drupal, which will help improve the usability. In a way similar to themes or modules, it will allow users to install icon sets and choose which icons to use for their theme. By providing a simple API, developers may use icons in their modules in an easy and coherent way, without reinventing the wheel.

Icons will improve the usability of Drupal's admin pages, which are often overloaded with text and are especially unfriendly to new users. The module will allow administrators to install icon sets, and optionally select which icons to use from the installed sets. The main goal is for this module to be included in core, so I'll look at the implementations of themes and modules in core to build a system of that standard. With a framework like this, themers and developers would have a standard way of adding icons to Drupal..

 Links

Project | Releases | Issue queue | CVS messages | CVS repository | Development plan | Discussion | Blog | Demo

 Current status

Continue working to complete the original goals of the project (having been revised).

 Project schedule

April 21:

• Rejoice!
• Eat cake 

April 22 - May 26:

• Fax my Student Foreign Certification and Proof of Enrollment to Google
• Create project on drupal.org (here)
• Create wiki page on groups.drupal.org (you're looking at it!)
• Create a blog (here)
• Create a discussion on the Icons for Drupal group to discuss the project with interested community members (here)
• See how other CMS projects have dealt with icons (methods used, CSS/inline, etc.) (here)
• See how the theme system deals with .info files and overrides
• Discuss the project with mentors, as well as other community members on groups.drupal.org
• Refine the development plan, adding any missed issues, considering other methods, etc.
• Work out an icon naming scheme and a basic set of icons that icon sets should provide
• Learn CVS thoroughly

May 26 - July 6:

• Begin coding
• Allow for icon sets to be detected, installed and uninstalled
• Allow for theme/module icons to be detected
• Use a fallback mechanism to automatically select most suitable icons
• Provide theme functions for modules and themes to embed icons
• Build a system for generating dynamic icon CSS files

July 7:

• Submit mid-term evaluation

July 8 - August 18:

• Collect icons for a default set that would be suitable for Drupal core
• Implement icons in the Garland theme for demonstration

August 19:

• Write and submit final evaluation

September 3:

• Submit required code sample

Ongoing:

• Implement icons into other modules (Ubercart, User Badges, etc.) for demonstration
• Allow user to manually select icons for each installed theme
• Write simpletests
• Test thoroughly
• See how the module can be turned into a core patch
• Create core patch and submit proposal for Drupal core
• Write documentation and guidelines for icons/icon sets

 Status updates

2008-06-06

Have done:

I was busy preparing for my last exam before the summer this week. Haven't been able to do much coding, but I tried out a couple of things, such as discovering icon sets in different locations, reading info files (easy) and rewriting CSS files (fun). I also discussed some aspects of the project with yoroy on IRC and created some issues in the issue queue, one of which quicksketch commented on.

Plan to do:

Really get started with coding. Have the module find all icon sets and present them to the user. I'm behind schedule, which I don't like, so I'll try to be as productive as I can.

Blockage:

None at the moment.

Screenshot:

2008-06-12

Have done:

Finally made a commit of code. The module can now; discover icon sets in different locations, read their info files, display a list of available icon sets in admin/build/icons, save the states of icon sets in the system table - allowing users to enable/disable individual sets. It is very much based on the layout of admin/build/themes, and I think this is a good idea as it's a tested layout that users know well, and it suits our needs perfectly. More details here...

Plan to do:

Talk more with my mentors (which I regrettably didn't do this week). Work out a icon naming scheme and a basic set of icons that icon sets should provide (discuss this with some people). Let icon sets provide a mapping of names => files in their .info files. Start working on a override/fallback mechanism for icons when multiple sets are installed. Once that's done, allow users to manually select icons from available sets.

Blockage:

Old commitments eating my time :(

2008-06-19

Have done:

I worked out an icon naming scheme together with yoroy. I'd love to get more feedback on this, so if you're interested, check it out! Just barely started working on an override/fallback mechanism. I've also cleaned up the module and rewritten some functions, so the code looks (and feels) better, and added Javadoc documentation for most functions.

Plan to do:

Get some feedback from quicksketch on the code, continue working..

Blockage:

Not much.

2008-06-24

Have done:

Since last thursday, I've improved parts of the code, gotten icon_get_icons() to find and fetch icons available to a theme, save the result to {cache}, and added theme('icon') capability, resulting in the first dynamically produced icon. I've also made a nearly working UI for manually selecting icons from all icon sets available to a theme, and have gotten plenty of feedback on the code and suggestions from quicksketch.

Plan to do:

Keep working :) (that was an easy answer)

Blockage:

I'm having trouble loading the $icons global variable on page load. I need to know the name of the current theme in order to fetch the right icons. During hook_init(), this is not yet set. I could use hook_preprocess_page(), but then the $icons global won't be set for theme_icon(). I could use init_theme(); in hook_init() to initialize the theme, but that feels very bad. Any ideas..?

 
_{^{Icons on this page (except the cake, which I admit having stolen) are from the GPL licensed NuoveXT icon set by Alexandre Moore and won't necessarily be used in the module or any icon set. Though they might :)}}