Les Bessant wrote:
It's been argued by several people that having to scroll down where they didn't before is a reduction in usability. These points, when made clearly and politely, have been largely ignored. I'm not really surprised that people are now becoming frustrated and describing the new write page layout as "terrible".
Okay, let me not ignore it, and state as I have in half a dozen other emails that I do not think having to scroll to enter a category is a reduction is the overall usability of the page.
I think Andrew's email describes well what the (apparently) silent majority of people have expressed in their feedback, that the primary thing they want to do on the write page is *write*. Categories, tags, etc are things that are generally written after the post (and we'll even be able to auto-suggest them based on the post content in the future, removing even more friction), as it's difficult to know how to tag something before it exists.
All design is a series of tradeoffs. The tradeoff here is that an assumed larger set of both power and novice users look at the new admin screen and say "ooh, less clutter, fewer distractions, easier uploading" while a smaller set says "where are my categories?" and then scrolls down two clicks and sees them. The second group either learns to scroll down a bit after writing a post, or installs a plugin to tailor their experience to their suiting.
-- Matt Mullenweg http://ma.tt | http://automattic.com _______________________________________________ wp-testers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-testers
