[wp-hackers] load_plugin_textdomain()

[Otto]

On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Xavier Borderie <xavier at borderie.net> wrote:
> One idea I have (which might be silly or just plain undoable) would be
> to build upon the well-received Notification Update message for
> plugins, and have it blurt out a "Note: This widget uses deprecated
> methods, and might not work in future WordPress versions." message,
> which would only appear of there was no new version in sight.

This has been discussed before, and rejected by a few, but I'd like to
beat this dead horse again... If a user of WordPress upgrades, and
then sees a message after upgrading that their plugin may be broken in
the future, they are highly likely at that time to go looking for an
update. Or, failing that, a replacement for that plugin.

In other words, we need to make the deprecated information *visible to
the end user*.

While it's true that plugin authors need to keep their software
up-to-date, what is even more true is that plugins that *don't* get
kept up to date need to be dumped in favor of the plugins that do. And
users are not going to dump older plugins if they don't know about
potential problems with them.

Which is a better UX? Having an upgrade break a bunch of plugins, or
having an upgrade tell the user "Hey, these plugins still work, but
they might not in a few more upgrades. Might be time to look for a fix
for them now instead of waiting until they break."

The only stick WordPress has to beat plugin authors with is the
end-user experience. If an author fails to stop using deprecated
functions, then their plugin could fail eventually... But the end-user
of that pluign has a different take on the topic, because the failure
will happen right at the time they upgrade WordPress, not the plugin.
So to them, it's WordPress's fault, not the plugin's or the
plugin-author's.

Show the deprecated info to the end-user and lots of problems will go away.