Contrib.social

[Meta] Appearance page is too long and confusing

Open on Drupal.org →
Created on 14 March 2017, over 7 years ago
Updated 4 May 2024, about 2 months ago

Problem/Motivation

The current state of the appearance page (/admin/appearance) has a rather high cognitive load for processing the contained information as well as for performing any configuration task.

The main problems:

  • Currently there are two completely different concepts on the appearance page. On one hand, you have the Install,Uninstall,Settings-buttons, leading either to a redirect to the corresponding settings page, the direct installation with the Set as default option, or the uninstall of the chosen theme. Especially the install/uninstall part is unusual for the Drupal admin user experience, where you are usually unable to trigger a process without submitting a form upfront. But on the other hand you then also have a form at the bottom of the page spatially and functionally separated, where you able to select the admin theme and set one related option with a checkbox.
  • Within the administration theme forms select element, the user gets presented a list of all currently installed themes - admin themes as well as themes not suited for the use as an admin theme, plus an option default theme which happens to be Olivero now (also not really suited for the use as an admin theme). Overall a highly demanding task especially for new and inexperienced users figuring out which theme qualifies as a suitable admin theme pick. But also experienced users have to visually process the list and recall and think for a second which theme is preferably used as a front-end theme and which is eligible to be used as an admin theme. If you are scrolled down to the administration theme form you either have to recall the current default theme or scroll up to the Installed themes section and try to process the theme titles again
  • Those theme titles are currently packed with information. First, you have the theme name followed by the version number with no visual separation. In case the theme is set as the front-end or admin theme default theme or administration theme is appended in parenthesis to the title. When the theme is labelled experimental in Core, experimental is added to the parenthesis as well. The whole line is displayed in bold text.
    To figure out which is the default theme, the user has to browse all installed theme titles first from left to right (for ltr reading directions) to distinguish which of those have parenthesis. Then the user has to scan each of those titles in question more closely starting with the name to the version number getting to the parenthesis to figure out if there is the default theme label included. In contrast, if you try to figure out what the active admin theme is (in case you are a new user and you are unable to recognize the visual active admin theme) you have two options - scan the theme titles as described for the default theme or scroll down to the bottom of the page. Both ways the cognitive load is rather high, requiring a lot of reading and processing of information.
  • The section titles Installed themes and Uninstalled themes are a bit misleading in particular for new users. With the release of Drupal 9.2.0 the ambiguous wording on the page got better when #2577407: Action of uploading module/theme files should consistently be called "Add", not "Install" → landed, changing the button label from from Install to Add. But the problem with the section titles remains. The Uninstalled themes section always triggers the potential assumption it is a list of themes "removed" from the site as well as from the file system and it is some sort of history of previously installed themes.

    • Proposed resolution

    A rough initial mockup:

    Remaining tasks

    User interface changes

    API changes

    Data model changes

    Original report by @matthieuscarset

    The Appearance admin page now presents a long list of available themes. Uninstalled themes group in particular is long and many "Test themes" doesn't have screenshots.

    This page is therefore hard to read and one have to scroll quite a bit in order to see the ADMINISTRATION THEME form at the bottom of the page.

    I propose to make theme_groups "collapsible" in system-theme-page.html.twig.

    Installed themes group should be open by default whereas Uninstalled themes group should be closed by default.

✨ Feature request
Status

Active

Component

Idea

Created by

matthieuscarset

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  • Usability

    Makes Drupal easier to use. Preferred over UX, D7UX, etc.

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  • Comment over 1 year ago →
    🇬🇧United Kingdom AaronMcHale Edinburgh, Scotland

    Just filed 📌 [PP-1] Review the local task and page order/titles/labels under Appearance Postponed , which is related to the work here.

  • Comment over 1 year ago →
    🇬🇧United Kingdom AaronMcHale Edinburgh, Scotland

    During 📌 Drupal Usability Meeting 2023-03-03 Fixed @benjifisher brought up the idea of moving the fieldset for setting the admin theme (at the bottom of the Appearance List page) to the Global Settings form, which I think is a really good idea. The Appearance List page is already doing too much, and this would be a very well scoped change which I think would be a good candidate for the first issue that this meta should look to address.

  • Comment about 2 months ago →
    🇺🇸United States benjifisher Boston area

    We discussed this issue at 📌 Drupal Usability Meeting 2024-05-03 Needs work . That issue will have a link to a recording of the meeting.

    For the record, the attendees at the usability meeting were @benjifisher, @markusVJH, @matthieuscarset, @rkoller, @shaal, @simohell, and @skaught.

    We considered what small steps we might make to move this issue forward. We came up with

    • The original suggestion when this issue was created. (See the "Original report" section of the issue summary.) We agreed to add a new child issue for that.
    • #3249370: Move the active Default and Admin Theme to a new section on top of the Appearance page →
    • Improve the status message when selecting a default theme. (Issue needed.) The current message is something like this: "Note that the administration theme is still set to the Claro theme; consequently, the theme on this page remains unchanged. All non-administrative sections of the site, however, will show the selected Umami theme by default."

    We also asked what the biggest usability problem is with the current page. We might come up with a different answer the next time we ask that question, but today we decided that choosing a default theme and choosing an admin theme should be more consistent. That should be addressed on #3249379: Make all form submissions on the Appearance page consistent → .

    Several of the child issues are tagged as Needs design → . One way to move these issues forward is to implement something and then ask for feedback on the design.

  • Comment about 2 months ago →
    🇩🇪Germany rkoller Nürnberg, Germany

    added the issue @simohell created to the list of child issues in proposed resolution section of the issue summary

  • Comment about 2 months ago →
    🇩🇪Germany rkoller Nürnberg, Germany

    and one formal question isnt this meta issue past an idea for a while? wouldnt it make sense to move it over to the regular issue queue?

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