[wp-hackers] Improving the mailing list. (Was Auto Update Plugins)

[Peter Westwood]

On 21 Feb 2009, at 00:47, Mike Schinkel wrote:

> Your list is very helpful but can I please ask for clarification on  
> this point?
>
>  * Work with the project philosophy not against it
>

Ok. It is hard to describe in a succinct way but there are a few  
things in general.

  * "Code is Poetry"
  * WordPress is a platform
  * "Options are bad" - User Interface should be simple, obvious and  
easy to use for everyone (including your cat ;-))
  * Standard compliance

"Options are bad" is the one that people often come up against and  
have the most trouble with.  The basic idea behind this (for me) is  
that the software needs to be configurable but you should only present  
the user with the options they really need to care about - the rest of  
the time you make a decision about what is the best behaviour and you  
just implement that.  This implementation should be done in such a way  
that hooks (actions/filters) are available so that a different  
implementation can be provided by a plugin.

I'm sure I've missed a lot here.

westi
-- 
Peter Westwood
http://blog.ftwr.co.uk | http://westi.wordpress.com
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