May 20 toolbar and admin menu meeting summary

This is a summary of the May 20 toolbar and admin menu meeting, which was held to jump start toolbar changes proposed in #32678 (chat log). The next meeting will be held May 27 at 16:00 UTC.

The biggest component of this initial phase of changes is bringing the entire adminadmin (and super admin) menu to the toolbar on the front-end. Given that this involves the admin menu “APIAPI An API or Application Programming Interface is a software intermediary that allows programs to interact with each other and share data in limited, clearly defined ways.”, we need to bite the bullet and dive into what it takes to give it a real API and fix #12718 (among others). In order to complete this for 4.6, work needs to move quickly.

Participants: @helen, @celloexpressions, @folletto, @emathison, @deshack, @morganestes, @rdall, @boonebgorges, @thomasplevy, @jeremyfelt, @clorith

Key points

  • Action item: A document outlining strategy, documenting the current API, and describing the design of a new API has been started. Sections that are empty/marked for help are in need of owners. This is to be completed by the next meeting.
  • While there are many interaction changes that need exploring, and a few included in the current proposal, the focus for this cycle is content changes.
  • The links currently in the W menu will be relocated/reproduced in other places, e.g. About in the Dashboard submenu and as the link for the version number in the footer of the admin.
  • @boone helpfully provided some background on BuddyPress’s very similar changes to its navigation API last week. This is also documented in the Google Doc above.

#toolbar