Drupal 7: first impressions
In the last post I mentioned that I was going to be trying out Drupal 7 for a new service we're biulding for Redkey.
Well, it didn't take me long to realise that Drupal 7 is not quite ready for prime time yet. This should not be a surprise because it is, after all, still in Alpha. But, what I did see was quite exciting.
The user interface is just so much better. The D7UX effort led by Mark Boulton and Leisa Reichelt did a fantastic job with this. Here's a summary:
- There is now a standard admin toolbar at the top.
- Contextual admin tasks can now be made to appear in overlays - useful when you need to stay on the page. Lookswise, the overlay can still be improved as it still looks 'raw'. This is also great for agencies because showing the ugly admin tools to a client wasn't always pleasant.
- On-hover contextual links work ilke in the D6 Admin module but with a neater UI. Although I have ot say I quite like the minimalist admin-icon in the new D6 Admin module.
- Customisable shortcuts make frequently used links easy to reach. We had a custom module for this built for client projects, but it is now standard in D7.
- Vertical tabs make the UI so much cleaner and less daunting. This is available as a module in D6, but standard in D7.
- I have not yet looked under the hood of D7 but it sounds like a lot of performance enhancements in Pressflow 6 is now in D7. The D6 to D7 migration page also lists various changes that have been incorporated at low level.
- The blocks management is still pretty much the same, which is disappointing. The admin for blocks is still pretty dire and needs a complete rethink, with the visibility setting a priority item to improve on, IMHO.
That was just quick rundown, and the reason we don't want to use it yet for our little project is because a lot of what we need are sitll unavailable and would have taken us too long to contribute to. These include the Location module and OpenLayers.
Fieldgroup will not be ported to core, even though CCK has been. It looks like this is part of a larger issue. There's a call for volunteers for porting fieldgroup, but pesonally I think the requirements look overengineered.
For the little project we're working on, we will go back to Drupal 6 for now, but D7 looks like quite a leap forward.
