Problem/Motivation
Improve usability and accessibility of long select lists and autocomplete tagging widgets.
Proposed resolution
Use Select2 for tags and autocomplete stuff.
Patch is almost ready, it just needs a new Select2 tokenizer that supports our "tag with, comma" syntax.
FAPI is not going to be changed, but since the latest version of Select2 only works with <select>, we need to add javascript to convert our <input type="text"> used for free tagging, to a <select>. We probably also need a submit handler in javascript that changes it back to a normal text field so our PHP code keeps working. We cannot solve this on the PHP side, since it will not work without javascript.
Remaining tasks
User interface changes
Yes.
API changes
Is this still a relevant change: The return value expected by the autocomplete API changes from array('value' => $value, 'label' => $label) to array('id' => $value, 'text' => $label).
Beta phase evaluation
| Issue category | Task because it is a usability improvement of various UI pieces which are already in core |
|---|---|
| Issue priority | Major because it greatly improves usability of long select lists (language selection in the installer, timezone selection, etc.) and Entity Reference's autocomplete widgets |
| Prioritized changes | The main goal of this issue is usability and accessibility improvements. |
| Disruption | Small disruption for contributed and custom modules that implement Drupal's autocomplete API because it will require a BC break. |