Show Active plugins at the top of the plugin list in plugin-editor.php

[codente]

This is something I've thought would be useful for quite a while.

[joyously]

Since editing active plugins is discouraged, why is putting them at the top a good thing?

[mukesh27]

Hi @codente, Welcome to WordPress Trac! Thank you for your ticket.

@joyously is right can you please share reason to show active plugin at top in plugin dropdown list, also you have an option to remove deactivate plugins from plugin directory.

[codente]

Sure - First, having them separated might actually make someone think twice about editing the file of an active plugin.

But we obviously know that people still edit the files - otherwise the protections put in place for the code editor (not saving if there is an error) wouldn't have been merged in. And we also know that people do not generally delete the plugins that are not in use. Some people do but speaking from a support perspective and seeing many sites on a daily basis, they do not.

In a situation where someone is going to edit a file and they know it's an active plugin, those plugins are at the top making it easier to find. I would imagine that developers would find it helpful when debugging an issue with a plugin and I know it's helpful from a support perspective for the same reason. It also would be a big assistance when looking into issues where plugins are white labeled and you do not know for sure what the plugin is from just looking at the plugin list.

There are other situations I can think of such as if you click the editor link instead of the actual plugins list link, you can still see what is active at a glance without leaving the page.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Would it be a good idea to always display active plugins first, i.e. in the list table on Plugins screen too? (Also suggested in #44696.) Seems consistent with the Themes screen, where the active theme is displayed first.

[arpitgshah]

This ticket was discussed in the design triage meeting, we suggested that keeping the alphabetical order and adding Active/Inactive to the plugin name would be a better solution

"Plugin Name - Active" or "Plugin Name - Inactive" as per the screenshot attached.

[arpitgshah]

screenshot

[SergeyBiryukov]

Appending "Active" or "Inactive" to plugin titles looks confusing to me, as it seems like it's a part of plugin title.

Could we use the ​<optgroup> tag here? Something like 45056.optgroup.png​.

Trac ticket:

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/45056

[arpitgshah]

Show "Active Plugins" and "Inactive Plugins" as per the @SergeyBiryukov screenshots.

Added patch.

Thanks,
Arpit G Shah

[estelaris]

Added the label needs-design-feedback to review it again in the next triage

[estelaris]

Ticket was discussed again during design triage and we agreed with @SergeyBiryukov's screenshot

[mukesh27]

Updated patch with some coding standard fix