[wp-hackers] WP 2.7 menu sidebar

[Stefano Aglietti]

On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 16:08:06 +0200, "Xavier Borderie"
<xavier at borderie.net> wrote:

>You can't expect users to swallow this one easily, guys. WP has had a
>coherent interface ever since 0.70, and even 2.5 didn't break 5 years
>of dev (or 7 years if we count b2). Then, within the same year, we get
>one major redesign, and then another even bigger one. So I agree with
>what Stephen says: this new update has better be here to stay for the
>loooong haul, because any further major change in there will make WP
>look really bad.
>It's quite easy to see, really : remember the numerous 1.5
>sub-versions (1.5.1, 1.5.1.1, 15.1.2, 1.5.1.3)? That's when WP got a
>first taste at bad reputation (too many holes, too many updates), even
>though we all know that security is hard with such major updates, and
>speedy updates should be seen as a good thing rather than the other
>way around. 2.0 had the same issue, although in a longer timeframe.
>Well, now we have 2 major admin updates in one year, not even related
>to each other (apart from the design studio): geeks like us just
>aknowledge it and keep on doing their thing, but users, oh baby, I
>hear the blogposts coming, and not all of them are good. If you don't
>want to drop a bomb on them, at least start RIGHT NOW to officially
>get the word out about crazyhorse in the official devblog. Eye-testing
>in New York is one thing, getting long time users to accept it is a
>whole other. Start posting now, my friends.

I agree a lot about this and about what Stephen and Paolo wrote. I
supposed crazyhorse was experimental for new idea and that passage to
trunk would be only for small tweaks taken from it. Two new desing in
a year sound like "we did first redesign wrong, watsed our time and
your time and now we are going to try something new. The actual design
was said coming out fron lon deep usability test from happy cog... and
now.. trwo away quite everything and start again with something that
is deeply tested againb usability usinbg laser... people won't
understand it. 2.5 and 2.6 introduced lot of new interesting features
like automatic plugin update and so on.. in 2.7 we are goimg to see
easy installation plugin from repository and lot of new ecting
features (may a WP aouto yupdate too) but all this is going to be not
so apreciated cause the new design cause this is what users see first.
An developpers get mad again, documentation need to be rewritten
(codex first) cause now things that was named for years get ne names,
we people of localizing team can patch this keeping old translation
for new name, I'm planning to keep Design for tempalte etc but anyway
is a bad thing too.

With a sol large base of users the new name for old stuff is a
nonsense, maybe new terms woukld sound bettere and more clear for new
users but I'm not sure, for sure they will piss off old users. I would
prefere if crazyhorse gets out of trunk and stay inb development again
for some months tweakking al refining every aspect of it, and then in
2009 instead of a 2.8 there shoudl be a 3.0 that intriduce this new
interface, good tweaked and refined telling users this will be the
interface for the next few years.. or at least use new design for old
menus not rearranging menus all over and adding some tweaks like the
draggability (that actually as Jeremy Clarke said is far than
funcctional and usable... and this make rise some dubts about the deep
usability test done on crazyhorse.

Just my 2 cents

-- 

Stefano Aglietti - StallonIt on IRCnet - ICQ#: 2078431
Email: steve at 40annibuttati.it steagl at people.it
Sites: http://www.40annibuttati.it (personal blog)
       http://www.wordpress-it.it (WordPress Italia)