Redesigning the Panels IPE
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A few years back I worked on a project, which will remain nameless, where I redesigned the IPE (In Place Editor) for Panels. My dreams were crushed when I found out implementation was not possible for various techno-complicated reasons.
Fast forward two years and I've redesigned it again, this time for Open Academy. I worked closely with Matt Cheney to design an interface that would not only work for our product, but would also enhance the user experience for all Panel-loving people. I focused on making the interface neutral to work nicely on any site, enlarging the buttons for improved usability and altering the colors of the target regions to make them more intuitive. Earl Miles committed the redesign, implemented by Kevin Montgomery, right before DrupalCon Denver.
It's been a real pleasure to see an idea from two years ago finally implemented. Feedback has been positive so far and admins have found the usability to be significantly improved.
I'd like to thank Chapter Three for allowing me to dedicate the time to work on this project which will improve the admin experience for everyone.
Panels and IPE rock. Making it better just rocks even more. Thank you guys !
This is such a great contribution. Much appreciated thanks!
This is a brilliant piece of work, and the future of Drupal as far as I'm concerned. Drupal's phenomenal growth would have hit a wall if we didn't find a way to tap into the unique power of installation profiles, and to do that we needed to make Drupal's front end as powerful as its back end. That's what you and Earl and Matt have accomplished with this implementation of Panels. For the past three years I feel like I've been playing a game of Myst, clicking high and low looking for the right key, only to find it's not quite right for this, that or the other reason, so I have to start all over again. And again and again. You've done away with all that nonsense. Panels puts everything right there on the screen. It's simple and flexible, and can be powerfully extended. It frees up tremendous energy from figuring out how to do something to actually getting it done. And it will transform theming too, because it standardizes much of what each theme has had to handle on its own. No discredit to them, but some developers still don't understand why Views has been the secret element driving Drupal's phenomenal growth, so there will likely be some pushback against the widespread adoption of Panels, which simply takes Views to the next level. But Panels is exactly what Drupal needs right now, not least so that the army of Drupal Consultants currently forming can shift their energies to building websites.