[wp-testers] AW: Write Page

[Matt Mullenweg]

Les Bessant wrote:
> It's been argued by several people that having to scroll down where they 
> didn't before is a reduction in usability. These points, when made 
> clearly and politely, have been largely ignored. I'm not really 
> surprised that people are now becoming frustrated and describing the new 
> write page layout as "terrible".

Okay, let me not ignore it, and state as I have in half a dozen other 
emails that I do not think having to scroll to enter a category is a 
reduction is the overall usability of the page.

I think Andrew's email describes well what the (apparently) silent 
majority of people have expressed in their feedback, that the primary 
thing they want to do on the write page is *write*. Categories, tags, 
etc are things that are generally written after the post (and we'll even 
be able to auto-suggest them based on the post content in the future, 
removing even more friction), as it's difficult to know how to tag 
something before it exists.

All design is a series of tradeoffs. The tradeoff here is that an 
assumed larger set of both power and novice users look at the new admin 
screen and say "ooh, less clutter, fewer distractions, easier uploading" 
while a smaller set says "where are my categories?" and then scrolls 
down two clicks and sees them. The second group either learns to scroll 
down a bit after writing a post, or installs a plugin to tailor their 
experience to their suiting.

-- 
Matt Mullenweg
http://ma.tt | http://automattic.com