Update: This BoF is in room 111.
Recently there has been a great deal of discussion about the future of Drupal's front end, the drawbacks of fully decoupled Drupal, and how to achieve better UX and DX without jettisoning all of the things that make Drupal so great on the front end. Let's talk about what the future of Drupal's front end looks like for 8.x, 9, and beyond.
This will be a neutral and unopinionated BoF with no particular stance, so it is a discussion, not a debate. We want to hear everyone out without preconceptions, because after all, we all want to see Drupal succeed. Any and all are welcome, especially those with opinions on the subject!
Key questions are not at all limited to the following, but this is a starting point (please feel free to suggest other discussion questions on Twitter):
- How should Drupal address increasingly demanding UX expectations (e.g. optimistic UI, non-blocking workflows, and especially immediate no-latency feedback and offline capabilities)?
- How should Drupal address increasingly demanding front-end DX expectations?
- Should Drupal adopt a client-side MV* framework or a view library?
- Should Drupal adopt a server-side solution such as WebSockets (asynchronous PHP)?
- Should Drupal focus solely on becoming API-first?
Required reading for background and to frame the discussion (familiarity with all of the following content will be presumed):
- The future of decoupled Drupal (Dries)
- Should we decouple Drupal with a client-side framework? (Dries)
- Selecting a client-side framework for Drupal (Dries)
- #2645250: [META] Supersede Backbone in core admin UIs with a new client-side framework
- #2645666: [policy, no patch] Require Node.js for Drupal 9 core and rewrite some of Drupal's UI code from PHP to JS
- #2651660: Investigate where and how a frontend framework could be used
- #2655556: [META] Dramatically improve Drupal-provided user interactions through perceived performance boosts and optimistic feedback
Further (optional) reading:
- Lullabot podcast: A front-end JavaScript framework in Drupal core (Lullabot)
- Why Progressive Decoupling Drupal's Front End Is a Bad Idea (Drew Bolles, Chapter Three)
- Decapitated Drupal: The Downsides of Decoupling (Mark Ferree, Chapter Three)
- Should Drupal add (another) JS framework into core? Not in the name of UX (Lewis Nyman)
- Drupal gets a feature request out of the blue (Théodore Biadala)
- How Drupal Should Handle Client-side Framework Obsolescence (Campbell Vertesi)
- Exciting times to be a Drupal front-end guy? (Mathieu Spillebeen)
