Make WordPress Core

Opened 7 years ago

Closed 4 years ago

#40268 closed enhancement (maybelater)

Remove mode switcher from the network admin sites screen

Reported by: johnbillion's profile johnbillion Owned by:
Milestone: Priority: normal
Severity: normal Version:
Component: Networks and Sites Keywords: has-screenshots has-patch
Focuses: administration, multisite Cc:

Description

The excerpt mode / list mode switcher on the Sites screen in network admin is not entirely useless, but it's not particularly useful either. The main difference is the toggling of the site title and description, and the toggling of the timestamp in the Last Updated and Registered columns.

This sort of toggling of minutiae details is an unnecessary feature. I think the details in the excerpt view should be shown all the time, and the mode switcher removed.

Attachments (3)

sites-list.png (44.0 KB) - added by johnbillion 7 years ago.
sites-excerpt.png (61.4 KB) - added by johnbillion 7 years ago.
40268.diff (3.1 KB) - added by johnbillion 7 years ago.

Download all attachments as: .zip

Change History (13)

#1 @johnbillion
7 years ago

  • Keywords has-screenshots added; needs-screenshots removed

@johnbillion
7 years ago

#2 @johnbillion
7 years ago

  • Keywords has-patch added; needs-patch removed
  • Milestone changed from Awaiting Review to Future Release

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core-multisite by flixos90. View the logs.


7 years ago

#4 @flixos90
7 years ago

We discussed this in today's multisite chat and were a bit wary of removing the mode switcher entirely: It's correct that the switcher is currently not useful for core, but as plugins possibly extend the sites table with custom content, the switcher may be useful to them, for example when a plugin really wants to add much more content than would make sense to show in the list view.
If we want to get rid of the mode switcher for core, I'd rather disable it by default, but put a filter in place to bring it back if plugins need it. Core itself could then ignore the setting and show whatever we decide makes most sense.

However there is also another reason not to remove the mode switcher at all: Currently the "Excerpt" mode uses switch_to_blog(), while the "List" mode doesn't, so displaying the default list mode comes with slight performance benefits. Not critical, but something to consider.

I think this needs more discussion before we can proceed (in whichever way).

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #core-multisite by earnjam. View the logs.


7 years ago

#6 @flixos90
7 years ago

Per discussion today:

  • Preferably both modes should continue to exist. The list view should only show the most basic site information all of which is available without any switch_to_blog() calls.
  • The excerpt view should show advanced information, but it should happen in a way that all necessary information is fetched in a single switch_to_blog() call per site and then stored temporarily, so that the column callbacks can access it. This ensures performance doesn't decrease crazily (otherwise we'd need to do a switch for every single field we'd wanna show).

My suggestion is to keep working on this, but relabel the ticket - removing the mode toggle should not be part of it, but rather get more value out of the two modes.

#7 @flixos90
7 years ago

  • Keywords close added

This heavily overlaps with #38210, which makes pretty much the same suggestion (just without removing the mode switcher).

I'm leaning against both of this, I think the mode switcher, particularly on the Sites screen, has a valid purpose:

  • The list view shows the most basic site data in a performant way.
  • The excerpt view shows additional site data in a less performant way.

The modes give everyone a way to choose whatever they prefer. I don't think we should remove this feature.

#8 @flixos90
7 years ago

#38210 was marked as a duplicate.

#9 @flixos90
7 years ago

  • Keywords close removed

Rephrasing my previous comment, my most significant thought is that I don't think the mode switchers should go away entirely. Instead, let's just not display them when they're not needed and introduce a filter to show them again.

This allows plugin developers to add more complex columns and use the different modes to determine what to display. It may even be the case that people are doing this already, and in such cases we would break their workflow.

#10 @johnbillion
4 years ago

  • Milestone Future Release deleted
  • Resolution set to maybelater
  • Status changed from new to closed
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