I've always wanted to redesign the Drupal icon (druplicon). When I first saw the face in the water droplet, I was reminded of the Alien Heads that you often see in cheap t-shirt shops. I saw it and immediately said, "Oh, this is some code that's made by kewl L1nUx h@ck3r Ge3k5." But then I started playing with and thought, "This is really good." I installed it for iaslash and it stuck.
A few years later. I still find the Druplicon very geeky and un-serious. So on another thread where I played with some Drupal T-Shirt ideas for the guys going to LinuxTag, I said I would try to come up with a design idea for a Drupal logo. And here it is:
I played with the idea of water droplets. One of them tries to form the shape of a lower case "d". The other one reminds me of atomic models or planets orbiting in space.
This is coming to a head for me because an in-house client I work with on a Traction k-log is now looking at Drupal. On the surface, Drupal doesn't appear to target itself at the business community, but I really wish it would. So this is my attempt to make a less geeky looking logo. I don't think my water droplets are perfect, but the concept is there.
Finally. My skinner.theme CSS skinning hack for Drupal is available. Download code and sample themes here: http://urlgreyhot.com/drupalthemes/
It's not elegant, but it works. Don't ask me for support, because I really do not have time to provide it. Hopefully this proof of concept will help illustrate the idea to a developer who can provide a well-coded replacement that can be incorporated into HEAD. Until then, feel free to use my version.
I've noticed a few pleas for a Drupal t-shirt for the upcoming LinuxTag conference. I came up with these designs this morning. Not in German, though. :(
Blogger tshirt store
Download PNG file to print your own on iron on tshirt transfer paper
Online community tshirt store
Download PNG file to print your own on iron on tshirt transfer paper
Powered by Drupal tshirt store
Download PNG file to print your own on iron on tshirt transfer paper
On the Drupal4Bloggers list, Myc offers a script to print a list of all blog entries in reverse chronological order. I wrapped it inside a modul you can see in action here: Index of blog entries on urlgreyhot.
I keep noticing references to the Drupal subscriptions module so I'm installing it here today. The module allows you to subscribe to get site update notifications by taxonomy term or by node.
In my opinion this feature should be installed as part of the core. Nearly every decent bbs software that I've ever worked with provides the ability to track a topic by clicking a link that reads something like "Send me email notifications when someone comments on this topic". Usually the labels are much more terse, but the basic functionality is understood. This functionality is absolutely necessary for bulletin board systems or forums and is one of the key usabilty problems with Drupal's forum module. Large forums become unwieldy to navigate very quickly, and very often you want only to keep track of those discussions you are participating in.
I think we need to consider bringing this one into core. We might need to make some minor improvements to it but its basic functionality is needed.
I see that Kika has submitted suggestions for improving the "My subscriptions" page, including this wireframe.
I would also add that the very terse link label "Subscribe" should be moved to a line of its own with a more descriptive label, e.g. "Notify me when someone comments on this (insert node type)."
Matt Westgate has contributed a nice new module to ease the process of inserting images into nodes. The module only handles image selection during node creation and not image uploading.
Ben has created a module to enable creation of personal bookmark entries at del.icio.us when posting blog entries to drupal.
Drupal users Morbus Iff and Tim Altman have been working on a robust converter based on Altman's MT to Drupal script, that will convert an MT database to Drupal.
The past month I started keeping track (on my Wiki) of usability improvements that I'd like to see addressed with Drupal. I've mainly been keeping track of problem areas I've encountered while using Drupal. I'm hoping some of these, along with the improvements provided in James Seng's installer, will eventually make it into 4.5.
I'm looking for comments on any of the suggestions captured below as well as suggestions for other usability improvements that I haven't thought of yet.
There seems to be a lot of linkage to Drupal getting generated over the past week. Much of this has to do with MT's pricing announcement, James Seng's announcement of a Drupal installation file for MT users and discussion of alternatives to MT on blogs like ScriptyGoddess. I think it would be awesome to see some of these people move over to Drupal. The improvements they can provide would be very welcome.
As a side note, I've been capturing usability improvements on my Wiki that I'd like to see made to Drupal in the coming months.