[wp-hackers] UI development for 1.6

[Terrence Wood]

I'm certainly not arguing about anything...

I wanted to contribute constructively -- that's why I said I would take 
a couple of days to gather my thoughts, rather than just throwing 
around some criticisms -- and being busy I wanted to gauge what had 
been done so I don't have to reinvent the wheel. That's why I asked 
first, and you gotta admit Yes/No answers are not particularly helpful 
in creating a dialogue.

What I mean by Shuttle being underground is that there seems to be no 
word from them about where they are at, and it appears their changes 
are being rolled into WP. Like it or not Shuttle *is* WP -- the team 
members are all WP celebs, and many people are awaiting their 
redevelopment.

But anyway heres the readers digest version of my thoughts...

Good things:
1. Use of cookies to store a customized entry form.
2. Use of brothercakes accessible box thingy.

Some ideas for consideration (in no particular order):
1. Ditch using tab index on the form -- it breaks keyboard navigation, 
and means people have to change modes (keyboard to mouse) to navigate 
the form properly. Focus the first field with js onload if you want.

2. Resolve the source order to (a) eliminate the mode change,(b) so the 
form make sense when is CSS off, (c) is easier for ppl to tweak in 
their own CSS (d) will allow better integration of plugged in fields 
into the form. Basically, this means grouping all the 'advanced 
options' together, rather than splitting them up before and after the 
title & content fields.

3. Make the submit buttons the last thing on the form. There is a 
disconnect that occurs by having form controls both above and below the 
buttons that affect them.

4. Eliminate the show/hide for every individual advanced option.  Most 
users will use less than half of these. Instead put these under one 
heading called 'advanced options'. Allow users to drag/select which 
advanced options they want to appear on their usual form and hide the 
rest.

5. Allow reordering of the main (title,excerpt, content) form fields. 
(Personally, I use the excerpt and I prefer it above the content field, 
others may dis/agree)

6. Use the 'fieldset' element properly. 'Fieldset' is being used to 
label form controls. It is supposed to group related controls together. 
Use the 'label' element to describe the form control -- this has other 
benefits such as improving the clickable target, plus it's extra points 
for semantics.

7. Change 'save and continue editing' button to a checkbox 'continue 
editing' and just have the 'save' and 'publish' buttons.

8. Provide a 'toolbar' hook so tools can be plugged into the form code 
above the content area without relying on js to provide a solution.

9. Make the show/hide toggles larger and provide hover/focus states. 
They are a really small target next to the blue title-bar device.

10. Ensure #postdiv is cleared properly when expanding adv. opts.

11. Close the adv. opt. boxes when the javascript loads in the doc 
head, and reopen them onload, rather than closing them onload, it will 
look prettier.


kind regards
Terrence Wood.


On 22 Jun 2005, at 6:36 AM, Matthew Mullenweg wrote:
> A group of people said "we want to donate our time to redesign the WP 
> backend" completely independent of WP development, I said "Cool, let 
> me set up a mailing list for you so I can keep track of what's going 
> on." Why is it "underground"? I don't know, maybe because more people 
> find time for arguing rather than coding. Shuttle is still separate, I 
> just stole some of their ideas and mixed it up with a drag-n-drop 
> thing I found. This list is entirely appropriate and relevant for 
> discussing any and all development of WP. Right now we're in an alpha 
> stage where EVERYTHING is flexible and open for discussion, no 
> decisions have been made about and nothing is set in stone.
>
> -- 
> Matt Mullenweg
>  http://photomatt.net | http://wordpress.org
> http://pingomatic.com | http://cnet.com
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