There has been a lot of informal talk about Drupal’s issue queue. For designers and non-technical people, it can be a confusing place. And while there has also been some talk about creating a separate place to discuss design-related issues (for example), the simple fact is: the issue queue is where developers get informed about problems and requests and that’s the place where they organize the work that they do. If non-developers want to improve the code, they have to use the issue queue.
However, there is a lot that could be done to Drupal’s issue queue to make it much easier to use and to navigate. It’s simply a matter of identifying the UX and IA problems and finding solutions for them. So let’s start talking!
And, of course, after we brainstorm, we’ll need to move individual solutions into the issue queue so we can get them fixed! :-D
Comments
Here’s a few ideas of the top of my head…
The reason that standard users can’t create
<img />tags in their comments is because that tag can be used as an XSS attack vector.However, perhaps we could have the software auto-generate an img tag that points to the uploaded image file. Obviously, we wouldn't want to break the layout of the site, so we'd need to create a “thumbnail” that was, say, 500px (or something large-ish). But that would be enough to allow easier iterations and discussions around images.
We need someone with a little more knowledge of the XSS to comment on this, but I think this would be easy-ish. In D7, we can add fields to comments, right?
Not everyone can figure out how to do a filter. Maybe we need a way to browse components? And have the components be better organized?
A lot of people know how to use search, so maybe when someone does a search, the results page has at the top links to the components that were matches and links to the issue tags?
I want to hear more problems and solutions!
- John (JohnAlbin)
- John (JohnAlbin)
a few thoughts
I'd like to be able to sign up to be notified of issues that are raised that use one or more keywords that I have selected. As per the findability issues you mention here, I don't have the time or inclination to trawl the issue queue looking for conversations to contribute to but if I'm made aware of them I'm very likely to drop in and contribute some thoughts.
I agree that it would be a great help to be able to see related issues so that you can get a sense of the bigger picture, if it's not a topic area that you're particularly familar with
Perhaps I'm just lazy but I find it incredibly hard work to wade through dozens of comments and try to get a sense of what the issue is, what the outstanding questions/issues etc. are and what needs help/advice/feedback. It would be great if there was some way of maintaining a summary (although I'm not sure exactly how you'd do this).
for me the absolute biggest problem with the issues queues is that we're constantly addressing just one issue at a time without any high level agreed vision to refer to. The development and regular reference to a user experience strategy and some good and prioritised personas would be incredibly helpful. The pattern library that Yoroy & Bojhan have started work on will also be enormously useful in this regard.
leisa reichelt - disambiguity.com
@leisa
Building relationships between issues
For a while now I have thought that it would be useful to be able to build relationships between issues.
This could be as simple as offering a related issues list. Or more advanced, like listing "Blocked by" and "Blocking" issues.
Since related issues of one type or another usually get scattered throughout the issue comments, his would be a much easier way of tracking down related issues.
Accessibility Consultant & Web Developer - Zufelt.ca
@ezufelt on Twitter | LinkedIn profile
Issue hierarchy
This was one thing Mark Boulton was complaining about. New ideas get broken up into several issues, and the overall view, the vision, gets lost.
What could help in solving this is one overall issue, including a description, a rationale, and several "Depends on" issues. All on one nice overview page. That, and an easy way to create those "Depends on" issues starting from the overall issue.
I would like to demo patches,
I would like to demo patches, to see the context of certain patches. As screenshots are great, but sometimes they fail to deliver how something feels as opposed to just how something looks. I know boombatower is already working on it, and I will be on it to assure that with PFTIR 2 - we can soonly also demo patches.
Also, as mentioned above I would like relationships and depancies on issues - so that the bigger picture doesn't get lost. I have tried this several times with [meta] issues and to be honest it is working pretty well. There should be a parent - child relationship possibility between issues.
The first functionality that leisa portraits, definitely interests me. Its very hard to wade trough several levels of comments, when you are only looking for a particular keyword (part of the design) to be addressed. Perhaps we can solve this by introducing commenting on images (like flickr does). We have been in conversation with drumm about this, and he demo'd his version at Paris - it will probably take a while till that is ready.
Provide a mechanism for issue
Provide a mechanism for issue meta discussions: http://drupal.org/node/569552 continues one of the ideas we all liked during our chat at the stairs in Paris: wiki-style big topic issues.