Drupal 8 for the End-user

Straightforward, non-technical content management is important to every web presence. The upcoming release of Drupal 8 promises to improve the authoring experience right out of the box. As the software moves into the Beta stages of development, we look forward to the improvements it will bring.

Drupal 8 has been built mobile-first across the board.The entire interface used by administrators on the back-end for content management has been cleaned up and made more accessible. Menu and tabs adjust for the size of the browser window, and for the device used to view it. A responsive preview toggle will allow users to flip between different devices and see how their content will display on an iphone 5 and in landscape orientation on an ipad.

Content creation will be revamped with Drupal 8. Rather than the content creation page popping up as an overlay, it will be its own page including a ‘return to site’ button–a nice navigation feature for administrator usability.

The authoring page will be a two-column display, showing the most prevalent fields on the left, with less pertinent fields available on the right hand side; eliminating the need to scroll through a long page. A core rich text editor (WYSIWYG) with full text format integration will allow authors to create detailed content without any html knowledge. Users will be able to insert and size images quickly and efficiently, including nice details like image captioning.

In place quick-editing is perhaps the most convenient new feature coming for authors with the Drupal 8 update. Administrators can edit any visual component of their content with a single click, including complex fields and taxonomies like tags. This clever tool also functions on mobile.

Overall the Drupal 8 end-user experience will be improved in basic usability, mobile responsiveness, and seamless content creation. We’re certainly looking forward to it!