[Policy] Remove tour module from core

Created on 6 December 2022, about 2 years ago
Updated 21 July 2023, over 1 year ago

Problem/Motivation

The tour module had ambitious plans
But nearly 10 years after its introduction, we still only have a few tours in core and have had to go through the maintenance burden of moving from joyride to shepherd as well as moving from backbone
Time spent on creating tours is probably better spent on improving UIs so they don't need tours

Steps to reproduce

Proposed resolution

Move the tour module to contrib in D10 and remove it in D11

Remaining tasks

User interface changes

API changes

Data model changes

🌱 Plan
Status

Fixed

Component

Idea

Created by

πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊAustralia larowlan πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ.au GMT+10

Live updates comments and jobs are added and updated live.
Sign in to follow issues

Comments & Activities

Not all content is available!

It's likely this issue predates Contrib.social: some issue and comment data are missing.

  • Status changed to Needs review almost 2 years ago
  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States xjm

    Removing a module from core requires the signoff of the subsystem maintainer when there is one, as well as all the committer roles.

    The committer team recently reviewed our scoring exercise on all core modules, and there was not clear consensus to remove Tour, so it needs to be discussed further (both by the committers, and with input from the community).

    Since Tour is a usability feature, I think we would also need Usability signoff on removing it.

    My personal perspective is that we need to write more Tours, and enable Tour as part of Standard.

    Please don't start tasks to remove this module yet as it does not have signoff or consensus.

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States xjm
  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States smustgrave

    Do think if tour remains in core we would have to look into bringing in Tour UI as currently the manual creations of tour config is tedious, which may be why it never took off.

  • πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊAustralia larowlan πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊπŸ.au GMT+10

    FWIW tour has always been part of standard.

    Also I messaged the maintainer (Nick) about this and he was on board with removal. I'll ask him to comment here.

    I personally think focusing on making UIs self explanatory is better than working on writing tours.

    Adding the FM approval by removing the tag.

    @GΓ‘bor Hojtsy gave the PM approval in #11 so removing that tag too.

  • πŸ‡¦πŸ‡ΊAustralia nick_schuch

    From a module maintainer's perspective, I agree with larowlan.

    I also don't want to step on any toes or process outlined by xjm above.

    I really hope this is a fork in the road and Tour gets to have a new life in contrib and benefit many.

    The module had some very lofty goals and I appreciate every single community member who has worked on it.

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States thejimbirch Cape Cod, Massachusetts

    I've posted in the #ux channel of Drupal Slack requesting a review.

    https://drupal.slack.com/archives/C1AFW2ZPD/p1675258116044409

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States smustgrave

    Should we go ahead and start postponing tickets on this?

    Example πŸ“Œ Write tour integration for shortcuts page Postponed

    If this got merged we would just have more to unravel later.

  • πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§United Kingdom catch

    We shouldn't postpone tour issues until this is RTBC.

    However, we can postpone that one, because ✨ [policy] Deprecate Shortcut module Needs work is RTBC.

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States dww

    Thanks, @xjm, for keeping the process on point. Given that the product owner, 1 framework manager, and 1 release manager had all voiced support already, it did look like a done deal. But thanks for the transparency about the full team not yet being in agreement, and for helping everyone understand the (sometimes confusing) world of Drupal governance.

    +10 to this from @bnjmnm in #10:

    Finally, I think the time is better spend working to make the UI's more intuitive. Nobody reads the docs anymore. I bet only 10% even got to this sentence.

    +1 to removal.

    +100 to all of #27 from @catch. We suffered a lot by doing the subtree split too early for QuickEdit. 😬 As soon as this is decided and we proceed, we should consolidate tour inside itself, and open issues where we *try* to both deprecate it and remove it, make sure tests work, etc. But we should wait on everything else until "the last possible moment." πŸ˜…

    No idea what my life will be like when/if this is all happening, but I'm also willing to help @smustgrave navigate these treacherous deprecation/removal waters, and possibly to help maintain contrib tour.

    Thanks everyone!
    -Derek

  • πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΈSpain ckrina Barcelona

    Removing Needs usability review after our discussion with @xjm and @lauriii at DrupalCon Pittsburgh. If it goes to contrib it might have more chances to be maintained and get updates, and since we don't have that many tours in core right now it won't be a UX issue.

  • πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡ΈSpain ckrina Barcelona

    I think I should have removed the "Needs further discussion" tag too because there's a general agreement on moving forward with this. Since @xjm and @catch already agreed, and Product Managers too, I'll leave the RTBC and removing the "Needs release manager review" to some of the Release managers that haven't commented yet.

  • Status changed to RTBC over 1 year ago
  • πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§United Kingdom longwave UK

    +1 to removal. It seemed like a good idea, but the execution has failed; there seems to be no interest in adding tours or improving existing tours for core itself, but we still have the maintenance burden; we already did the migration to shepherd.js and now it needs a major version update.

    This can still live on in contrib for sites that need it - I have a customer site that provides a tour for onboarding, which seems to work well there, but in core alone I agree that we should spend time directly improving UI/UX instead.

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States smustgrave

    And want to add when it gets to to contrib idea is it breathe new life into it. Merge in tour ui for example

  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡±Netherlands clemens.tolboom Groningen, πŸ‡³πŸ‡±/πŸ‡ͺπŸ‡Ί
  • πŸ‡¨πŸ‡¦Canada deviantintegral

    We recently used Tour to great success in onboarding new users to the American Bookseller's Association bookseller platform. However, the value was in that the tours were really application specific, and not generalized Drupal admin UI Tours.

    However, that's a single site out of everything we've done with modern Drupal. I think it's safe to say that most Drupal sites aren't used as SaaS platforms. So, +1 from me to moving this to contrib.

  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏNew Zealand quietone

    For the record, I agree with #43 and support moving Tour to contrib.

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States xjm

    Saving credits.

  • Status changed to Fixed over 1 year ago
  • πŸ‡³πŸ‡ΏNew Zealand quietone

    Thanks everyone for expressing your opinions and to xjm for saving credit.

    We have agreement here and sign-off from all the different managers, this can be closed now. The actual work will happen in the core issue queue.

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈUnited States smustgrave

    Also was made co maintainer of tour ui. So will be getting that ready to be merged into tour when we move it!

  • Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.

Production build 0.71.5 2024