So, you’re a site builder and you want to manage the layout of a node, form, search result,... then Display Suite is a fantastic tool to get the job done through the user interface. Thus avoiding extra coding.

As with other great Drupal modules Display Suite started out as a small project. Over the course of a few years, Display Suite became a powerful and well known tool with more then 17.000 installations!
All that muscle doesn't come for free. Features got added like lego blocks with a working product as primary goal. Now it is time to look back and analyse the usability of Display Suite. Krimson gave me the opportunity to analyse and improve the UX of Display Suite as part of my internship.

UX improvements

I engaged in extensive discussions with themers, developers, designers and usability experts and charted the strengths and weaknesses of Display Suite from different perspectives. The fact that I had to explain basic functionality to some of them is a telling sign.

The current interface is too confusing. There is no separation between primary and secondary tasks, some operations are not understood or misunderstood by reading the help text, the naming of labels and menu's is inconsistent or unclear, several options are not to be found, ...

Based on these discussions I made several improvements in a new, separate feature branch of the project. You can get this version of Display Suite from the Git repositories. I also opened an issue in the Display Suite queue with more info about the proposed changes in the prototype.

Needs review

Before we can merge these, I call on site builders, themers, developers,... who are using or have used Display Suite. We need you to review and test the proposed changes so we can fix things before they get merged in. Even if you're not a Display Suite user this is a great opportunity to contribute to this powerful module.

The current branch is stable but should not be used in production sites yet. If you find a bug with the new branch or you don't like one of the changes please respond in the issue.

When you get stuck try to find me in one of the drupal IRC channels or ask for help in the issue mentioned above. It helps me and the community to understand the issue. Your input, doesn't matter how small it is, can bring Display Suite to a higher level.

HTML5

I'm also highly involved with the drupal 8 HTML5 initiative. Over the past months I gained a lot of insights on the benefits and drawbacks of HTML5. During my Display Suite analysis I researched the posibilities to combine both. I implemented a solution that provides HTML5 wrappers for layouts, regions, subregions and fields. If you have another take on how we can foster integration of HTML5 and Display Suite, pleases share your ideas!