I would like to see a hiearchical view of modules, that require dependencies, both in images of the actual module on its page, and also in the URI/URL. It cements the idea I have of it, if you know what I mean.
A lot of modules are listed as living in ether, and are middleware for views or another module. At the moment the projects section is quite difficult to traverse. Could it be possible to maintain it with either just a block that lists its dependancies, and which modules require it? This would organise it so that in order to create an installation or a profile, that does one thing, a person/programmer could grab at one tree of modules, and not waste time looking at the whole kaboodle, going wow it does this or that.. and instead go okay, today I am creating with that 'treemodule'. This also gives an impression of finding what possibilities there are from the start, with this CMF thing.
I didn't realise there was any genealogy stuff here, but I would have known sooner if there were fewer base modules to glean functionality from.
Helper functions can be listed as CRUD base modules, for instance, unless you want to rename that as HUDBF, i.e. Helper (User) Drupal Base Functions, or even something that rolls off the tongue better.
Essentially, this create a few extra fields for each modules submission, dependancy (1,2,3,..), required by (1,2,3,..).
The moduletree module would compile all it sees, when people click on projects, and it would display, in context, the module, and its close ties.
Okay, so it might run into problems when 200 modules require this one, but it would in this circumstance show what is popular, and most used/required. The stats from something like this would be rather interesting.
When there are more than one galleries, it may cause problems, but then, I guess this would invlove putting a horizontal view together with the vertical view. It might be interesting to see a link to another page of this picture/view, or even a small banner above the content, or even a tab with these details.
It would also be nice to see examples, for instacne to show organc groups as being simialr to alt.newsgroup design/structure. So another block/tab would have similarites. In some pages there are usages and features, but that is only down to the module author to instance these, whereas if authors had to populate these fields, they might put something other in than n/a, which of course would not show, it being part of an if statement, i.e. if n/a then dont show endif.
I did not associate organic groups with newsgroup functionality, and was quite confused about whether I needed it until that is I delved deeper. It took me too long to find out what it was, and I really did waste a lot of time.
Drupal has many many modules, and I really dont need to waste months going through modules until I find the right ones to build a site. Its just not feasible, and from a design pov it does not make drupal accessible.
I understand that it would be very dificult to start redesigning the whole site, telling authors they need to populate these fields, so you could instead just introduce it as a part of D7, when its roled out for this site g.d.o and/or d.o.
In a way this is partially represented in the Beyond The Basics block, for instance the Videos and Slides menu item has child item Modules, which iself has children. This, for me, is a bit confusing, seeing as there are a few items with video in the title, which could all be children of media instead of Videos and slides. Although with the beyond the basics module, it would be nice to find things which are specific to my version of drupal, i.e. D6, and not have to wade through them all, or if it is for D5, which automatically makes it for D6 then it should say that, as modules are not crossversionable, so why should howto's.
It seems a bit jumbled all together for me, but then maybe I am a special needs case, or maybe I am an average user. I'm certainly no programmer, although I know my php's from my asp's. Enough of me. What does everyone else think? Does this rattle a few bones, produce a few hums, or maybe just brings out a few blank stares?
Thank you in advance.