Status update at less than 2 weeks before feature freeze
First-off: everything is moving. This is good.
- A new design for action links was committed this week: Action links were ignored
- Modules page redesign is very close to rtbc, just one more bug to fix it seems
- Core should get its implementation for making modal dialogs in place before feature freeze
Some new cool features showed up in the usability queue too:
Neither of those are new ideas and especially Project browser already has literally years of effort behind it. Go check them out and help people move forward through solid reviews (and not by suggesting nice new feature thingies, no time for those :-)
Views
In these last two weeks before feature freeze the views team is focussing on getting the code in better shape. For the rundown of Views UX issues, have a look at the Views usability testing report and the related issues.
Spark
- Toolbar is getting closer
- Edit in place needs more reviews
We didn’t spend much time discussing these this week.
Pages & Blocks
Gabor is coding like mad to get the fundamentals in place for the new way to create layouts for pages and putting stuff on them:
- Add simple landing page creation capability
- Add layout template demonstration
- Add page to configure master displays
All of these are still very rudimentary in terms of actual UI. There’s an insightful diagram here that shows how these parts play together. These issues need code architecture reviews more than anything. The aim is to get just enough of the basics in place before feature freeze so we can still make the awesome after freeze.
Post feature freeze planning
We discussed plans for the months between feature freeze and code freeze (April 1st 2013). We’ll want to do some more rounds of usability testing in dec/january so that the right things can be worked on towards april 1. Needs planning and help setting up the test plans, running the tests and reporting back. Possible topics: Spark features, Getting started, Pages & Blocks, Creating content but all depending on how far the actual features are in place.
Welcome Ry5n and what is UX team up to anyway?
First, a big hand for ry5n who’s been toiling away at getting the fundamental issues in shape for the new content creation screen. He reached out to bojhan and dcmistry asking how to get more involved in UX team. Of course, by working so hard on these essental UX issues, he already is a member, but yes, it’s hard to catch up on things if you’re not in IRC all the time. Which of course points out the usual chaotic (lack of) process we’re always struggling with. And again we’ll try to get better at reporting back about all the goings-on like in these meeting notes :)
- Every monday in IRC we meet up to report on progress and decide on the most important next actions for the various issues. This is the best way to engage with other Drupal UX’ers.
- http://groups.drupal.org/usability moves slower but has a lot of background on the bigger topics and usability testing info
- The UX handbook pages for reference: http://drupal.org/ui-standards
Contact bojhan, dcmistry or yoroy through their contact forms or ping @bojhan, @dcmistry, @royscholten on the Twitters.
Thanks for reading.