Discussion Topic
Felicity is about to embark upon documenting the system extension, Admin Panel, which currently has no documentation.
When searching Forge to make issue (93260) to create the documentation, she came upon bug 92856 raising this problem about the name.
The problem
- Many new TYPO3 users are confusing the term “Admin Panel” with the backend. As in many other systems (WP, Drupal, Magento,…) the “Admin Panel” (or “Administration Panel”) means the place we call “Backend”.
- It also doesn’t wholly describe the functionality of the extension.
To lower the entry barrier for new users Admin Panel should get a better, less confusing name.
About the Admin Panel
The Admin Panel itself shows on the frontend.
When the extension is activated, a bar displays at the bottom of the screen with a summary of information (load time, errors/warning and TypoScript messages) and a cog icon to open a larger panel.
It shows loads of information and is useful for a number of functions:
- TypoScript: TS Tree
- Info: General, PHP, Request, User_Int
- Debug: Events, Log, Page title, Query information
You can also configure settings to experiment with your caching when you’re trying to improve performance of the site.
You can simulate user groups, simulate time and show hidden pages.
I think there is a lot of cool stuff packed in here that documentation would help bring to light. And an appropriate name would be a great start to that.
Some suggested names
Developer toolbar
Debug bar
Dev tools
Dev console
Next Steps
It would be great to resolve this naming issue before the v11 release.
Let’s have a discussion here, with the aim to come up with a shortlist of name options so we can then hold a vote.
Impact
Renaming is one of the hardest things to do in software
Renaming this extension will have impact mostly on power users developers and integrators who were using the tool.
Additionally all occurrences of “Admin Panel” in the documentation should be adapted.
Possible Migrations/steps
- write documentation using the new name
- adapt existing documentation to incorporate the new name
- rename Admin Panel to new name in extension labels and UI
- introduce new TypoScript config to replace
config.admpanel = 1
and deprecate the old one. - rename extension key ‘adminpanel’ and class namespace (also composer “replace”)
Edit:
As noted in the comments, Admin Panel now serves 2 major purposes and have 2 user groups:
- Editors who use it for content simulation / preview
- Developers/integrators who use it for debugging, and peformance tuning (profiler)
As the 1st usage intent (content preview) is similar to the preview toolbar in the workspace module, maybe in the longer run we should extract the content simulation features from admin panel and put create a new toolbar for content simulation/preview which will be used in both workspaces and for previewing content with start/stop/hidden simulated.
Remarks and notes
You don’t see the name displayed anywhere on the interface.
Perhaps we should introduce that - maybe into a title bar on the panel. Or a tooltip when you hover over the slider to turn it on and off in the frontend.
Organizational
Topic Initiator: Felicity Brand
Topic Mentor: Tymoteusz Motylewski