Re: [development] Why is Overlay in core?

[Brian Vuyk]

On 10-01-05 10:41 AM, Gábor Hojtsy wrote: On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 4:33 PM, Brian Vuyk <br...@brianvuyk.com> wrote:  Have you tried opening admin links in new tabs and it did not work as  it did before? Of course it works. But they open in the overlay again, which presents me with a smaller working area, and really nothing added except a shiny-looking AJAX / JS annoyance. If people are doing opening Overlay in tabs anyways, what is the point of having Overlay at all? I'm getting you open in new tab but then open links in that tab, which will indeed use the overlay. It will not remember you did not want it to open in the overlay, because opening new tabs is not designed to sidestep the overlay but to "branch" your admin work (just as it did before). Drupal remembering that you started using the admin pages in a full browser window (by opening a new tab for example), so it will not open overlays sounds like a possibly good feature request turned out in your personal user testing. Gábor Gabor, I believe you misunderstood: If I have the overlay open in my first tab (Tab A), with the 'Configuration' page loaded in it, and tell a link (eg.,  'Modules' tab) in the overlay to open in a new browser tab, the new tab opens, overlay loads, and displays the 'Modules' tab. I don't think this is a bug - it makes logical sense it would do this. However, my issue is that if people have a browser that supports tabbed browsing, that defeats the only possible use-case I can think of for using Overlay - that is, retaining their current page context in the background while performing admin tasks. To me, having overlay on a site is like putting flourescent lights and windows in your computer case. It may look a little cool if that kind of thing works for you, but serves no real purpose. And overlay comes at a cost: reduced page width available for admin tasks, distracting dimmed out page background Performance issues (yes, it's better after the performance patches landed last month, but it's still slower than not using it.) Additional maintenance commitment for core developers. For most Drupal users (who are developers / site builders), the first things they will do with *every* D7 core install will be to disable Toolbar and Overlay, and install Admin Menu (http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu). Anyways, I realize now that I've put out a whole stream of arguments when I told myself I would save it for the issue mentioned in Ezra's reply to my original post, but the more I think about it, the more the decision to keep Overlay in core bugs me. Brian