User interface design has been researched a lot over the last decade.
And many, many, many of the choices made in the redesign of the WP
user interface go squarely against the results of that research.
- unintuitive links:
-- "editing a comment by clicking on the author's name" (that
should get you somewhere related to this author, not to this specific
comment)
-- "editing your profile by clicking on your user name" (that is
not quite as weird, but still, it's not intuitive)
-- a "Manage" link that allows you to manage lots of very different
things, but not comments
- bad screen layout
-- yes, a maximum width is good, but then it needs to apply to
EVERYTHING - so the "Howdy <user> | Log Out..." and the "Settings
Plugins Users" also need to be bound by the width - otherwise they
become invisible to the user
-- top level menu items are in three locations ("Dashboard" at the
very top, "Write, Manage, Design..." a little below, "Settings,
Plugins, Users" on the right
-- there are two items named Dashboard on the screen (or put
differently, Dashboard is a submenu of Dashboard)
- bad minimum requirements (why can't I use the wp-admin pages from a
Blackberry?)
- really hard to use with a text based browser (which means that you
create lots of problems for blind people)
Every time one of us criticizes the new design we are told how hard
the team tried and how much work went into it. Look. The team writing
Windows Vista tried really hard and a lot of work went into it. It
still sucks. Same goes for lots of other software. In open source
usually software gets better BECAUSE the constant feedback of the
community is taken seriously. I don't feel that our feedback is taken
seriously at all - most if not all of the things I list above have
been reported over and over again, yet nothing has changed.
The user interface of 2.5 is a CLEAR STEP BACKWARDS. And saying that
this will be "fixed in 2.6 if enough users complain" is just
ridiculous. Why make it worse to begin with???
(just to be fair, there are new features that I love - like the media
upload thingy; it also has usability issues (why does "insert into
post" close the window if I just uploaded multiple pictures? Makes no
sense), but it's a huge step forward)
/D
On Mar 26, 2008, at 11:41 PM, DD32 wrote:
On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 17:14:13 +1100, deliciousdays <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
I agree, the 980px limitation in width is not good *to say the least*
and the fact that a 'plugin' is offered to overwrite this CSS
setting is
a joke, right?!
No offense intended D, but I'm getting more and more frustrated with
many of the recent design and UI decisions.
None taken at all, The way i see it though, Is that the design
choice has been made for the 2.5 release, I dont agree with it, I
might as well offer a plugin to change it. Theres a few things i
dont agree with the new interface, but its not worth going into them
all.
The feedback given will be what steers the UI changes, Theres been a
remarkably small number of complaints about the width from what i've
seen, which means most people who have been testing dont mind that
much. Most feedback on the changes have been positive, So its either
people like it, They dont care, or they dont complain.
If once 2.5 is released, and theres a huge backlash of users wanting
their fluid back, then feedback may dictate a change to be made.
If those who want the fluid design back, feel strong enough about
it, go rate it: http://wordpress.org/extend/ideas/topic.php?id=1291
Might as well collate the votes somewhere.
To a point where I simply don't care and am happy (and already
have) to
apply my own admin CSS theme with JS driven menu tabs.
But why not spend more time on fixing real issues than trying so
hard to
come up with a different UI, that seems to be put together 'on-the-
fly'.
To be fair, HappyCog( http://www.happycog.com/ ) did put a fair
ammount of effort into the new design, And based it around a lot of
user research, Put together some wireframe mockups of a better
interface, And piece by piece, the Devs have done a great job of
implementing the changes, and improving WP in so many other ways at
the same time.
WP 2.5 also includes the ability for Plugins to overrule the Admin
theme all together, So i'd expect to see a few spinoffs which
improve upon the current design, If the changes are popular enough,
then i'm sure Devs would consider pulling those changes into the core.
Once you've used the 2.5 admin for awhile, Its much comfier, if
you've just changed over from the old interface, then its going to
take some time to get your grips on it, As expected.
All i'm trying to say, Is give it a chance before writing it off
entirely.
There'll allways be people who do *not* want to change,
There'll be people claiming the old interface is better, and
*nothing* will change their minds,
There'll be people who like it, but dont agree with some aspects,
and there'll be those who love it,
Those 3 groups of people are expected,
Theres people who absolutely hate the old interface,
Theres people who liked it, but found it cumbersome, or felt it was
time for a change,
and theres people who loved it.
Point is, nothing much has changed, its just the people may have
switched group.
So, If someone doesnt like a current design choice, Voice it, get it
known, Who knows, Fluid width might be back in 2.5.1
O
PS: Someone somewhere wrote "WP is the new Windows" - I hope not.
DD32 wrote:
Aparantly most people prefer a thin content frame rather than a
fluid content frame.
Personally, If i want my content thin, i resize the browser window.
I wrote up a plugin to remove the maximum width if you would like
to try a full width admin.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/remove-max-width/
D
On Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:06:49 +1100, Eric Amundson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
On 03/26/2008 Vladimir Vuckovic wrote:
I don't know is this bug, but I'm running my computer on 1280x960
pixels and I notice that whole WordPress 2.5 (which is so
amazing) is
on the left align, not centered or streched 100%... I think that
it's
better to be in whole window, not only on the left and there's a
lot
of blank space at the right...
Thanks,
Vladimir
Hi Vladimir,
I'm running on a few monitors - both wide screens.
I think if you look closer, the header and footer expand to fill
the
width of the browser, no matter what the width.
The 'body' of the admin panel, which is wrapped in a div
class="wrap"
has a max-width of 980px, which is likely to spare the design from
breaking or becoming too hard to read (excessive line lengths),
when
maximized on wider screens.
I like this a lot and rarely maximize my browser anyway on a
wider screen.
eric
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