[wp-design] A Quick Sketch

[Joen Asmussen]

Nice sketch, Michael. I have some comments.

> Using Joen's PSD file (which almost killed my poor Powerbook!), I 
> quickly moved around some of the elements (I hope the list can receive 
> these files) :

Sorry about that, I guess I'm just spoiled here on my foo-tastic Windows 
machine. I forgot you were on a mac. Poor you. *hehehee* (I jest of course)


> 1) I don't think it should be called 'Write Page'. It's too 
> indistinguishable from 'Write Post'. My girlfriend wouldn't 
> necessarily understand the difference.
>
Totally agree.

> 2) (sorry for the order of the numbers) First of all, there should be 
> no difference between the buttons in terms of using bold and what not. 
> Secondly, it's my opinion that 'save' should save the entry in the 
> same way that 'save' in any application would, and not 'save and 
> close', which is what it does now. Preferable it should save using 
> that XMLHttpthingamabobber, letting the user know of a successful save 
> somehow (not a popup box for the love of God!). If this is 
> implemented, there should also be a visible indicator of whether or 
> not you have saved the entry you are working on yet... I personally 
> think we should implement autosave as well, but I'll throw that up for 
> discussion. Publish should save, publish and take you to the post 
> permalink.
>
Totally agree, except for a few things.
For one, we should be _really_ careful which things we "hide" by 
default. Sure we can cookie stuff, but by default, it should be optimal. 
Things that would be obvious to hide, are "timestamp" and "custom 
fields". However, post status, post slug, at the very least, should be 
visible by default. I don't mind that we can collapse these, and cookie 
that setting.

> 3) Trackback, time, post slug, custom fields and what not else should 
> all go in under 'Advanced Options'. Pressing the arrow / link will 
> unfold it (dynamically of course) and allow you to make the changes 
> you want.
>
I'm all for the idea of hiding stuff, but we should be careful about 
"mystery meat" navigation. By that I mean, instead of writing "advanced 
options", and hiding everything under that, we have titles for each 
hidden element, and dropdowns for each.

> Furthermore, the 'edit time' should have a button that brings up a 
> calender instead of the current method. Something like this (which I 
> ripped out of Squarespace):
>
couldn't see the sample?

> 4) I think the title should have a much larger font in the input 
> box... Makes sense I think :)
>
I can see what you mean. However, this is not a WYSIWYG app, and we 
shouldn't kid people into thinking so. I'd rather a uniform size for all 
input boxes.

> So anyway, just some quick thoughts. I've cropped off the preview 
> window because I didn't want to spend time with it, but I do think it 
> should be there, and I think it should be a) dynamic and 2) support 
> Markdown and Textile.
>
a) If the programmers can do this properly, go for it. However, when 
writing really long comments, I find that my live preview slows the 
whole thing down considerably. I'm not sure it's worth it. Plus, it's 
good to save once in a while, lest you lose what you've written.

-- 

Joen Asmussen

CPH, DENMARK
ICQ: 2462161, AIM: workjoen

work: www.titoonic.dk <http://www.titoonic.dk> | private: 
www.noscope.com <http://www.noscope.com> & www.turtleshell.com 
<http://www.turtleshell.com>