[wp-testers] No-Notice Design Opportunity

[Jane Wells]

I'm saying this flat out: this announcement is coming with no notice.  
There's a post on the dev blog now about an opportunity for community  
designers to take a stab at making the header/nav of the admin look a  
little more polished. The idea only came up last night, and with the  
2.8 deadline looming, it would have made more sense to just have Matt  
Thomas (who did the visual styling of 2.7) kick out a revised comp,  
but we thought it would be cool to let the community submit design  
suggestions in visual form. We posted a PSD of Matt's, and anyone who  
would like to propose an approach is welcome to submit a design.

Since it's a small project, we think this is reasonable. Matt Thomas  
is working on a comp, so if no one wants to jump in and take on the  
challenge, that's okay. Like I said, the idea just came up... we  
didn't think we'd have time for this kind of thing until 2.9. In 2.9,  
there will be some screen design opportunities around the media upload  
process, and those larger design projects will be announced a week in  
advance, and have reasonable turnaround times for deliverables. But  
not this time! We're trying to squeeze this in under the wire. All  
details are in the post: http://wordpress.org/development/2009/04/design-tweaks-whos-in-an-idea-in-three-acts/

Slightly but not really off topic: I do want to say that I paid close  
attention to the thread about the has-patch marathon and the two-days'  
notice not being enough. I started to write a lengthy response, but  
decided it would be better to turn that energy toward making change,  
rather than responding point by point to the complaint. I'm going to  
start working on figuring out how to improve communication between  
core devs/contributing devs/Automattic, which will include things like  
the Ideas forum, the lists, the dev channel, support forums, community  
blogs, etc. I'm gathering my thoughts right now and trying to get 2.8  
out of the way, but in the very near future I'll start soliciting  
feedback around this issue, and even more importantly, soliciting  
SUGGESTIONS. Complaints may get the issue noticed, but only by working  
together for an improved system can we solve these issues.

Thanks!
Jane