Nederdev : web and Drupal stuff

A few weeks ago Erik Stielstra started an issue to improve Header Image's help section. The two of us spent some time on one of his ideas: dynamic help. Our goal was to create a list of configuration steps that are important to set up Header Image. All steps that weren't executed yet would have to be marked in some way.

What is it?

So far we created a list that looks as simple as possible and we hope with good usability. Steps that have yet to be executed are marked by a warning icon, a yellow background and a title that says that step isn't completed.

Last weekend I extracted the code from Header Image and created Dynamic Help. Now other maintainers can use our technique to provide dynamic help to the users of their modules without worrying about usability or consistency.

Future development

Our goals are to develop Dynamic Help into a module that will be of use to a wide variety of modules, but will still present a simple and overseeable list of steps to end users. Two issues that have been brought up so far are:

Dependencies

Some steps may depend on the outcome of others. This should be taken into account and shown to the user.

Step order

Steps may need to be executed in a certain order. How do we show the user in which order in a simple and usable way?

If you want to help us and improve existing ideas or bring up new ones, please post your thoughts at groups.drupal.org or in the comments in this post if you don't have an account there.