[wp-design] Re: Shuttle Wave 1

[khaled Abou Alfa]

C'mon guys a bit of chit chat, (thanks Michael feedback is always GREAT!!!)
Matt, Chris, Ryan, Joshua what  are your thoughts? There's 17 pages for you
to comment on. Is the ajaxy stuff within worth it? Is it all doable? Good?
Stupid? Indifferent?

On 3/2/06, Michael Heilemann <heilemann at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Alright, so I've looked over Khaled's wave o' stuff from this morning,
> and I really like what I see. I of course have a bunch of stuff I'd
> like to see happen, but by and large I like where it's heading.
>
> But in thinking about how we get going from here, I came to the
> conclusion that we'd all be much better off if we could get the coders
> to take what we've got here and put it into PHP/XHTML/CSS.
>
> That way we could start hammering out the final form while figuring
> out the details.
>
> Whatta ya say?
>
> - Mike
>
> On 3/1/06, khaled Abou Alfa <brokenkode at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Evening/Afternoon/Morning everyone,
> >
> > Hope you're all well and good. I know I said I do EVERYTHING before I
> send
> > it all through, but to be honest I've done enough here that I've set the
> > RULES of the redesign. Stuff that effectively will get copied in various
> > ways. Sure I'm going to visit all the remaining pages for completion
> > purposes however I felt that I've reached a specific point which get my
> > thoughts across.
> >
> > I actually remembered why I wanted to do this in the first place. For a
> > while there the redesign was getting a bit of a chore for me, and that's
> not
> > the way it's supposed to be. I should have been enjoying it, which for
> some
> > reason I wasn't. I realised that the reason was that I was second
> guessing
> > everything I did. Every pixel. I'd send through for comment or see if
> anyone
> > would take it and run with it, however it didn't really work like that,
> > except in the very beginning. The good thing is that we kept talking and
> a
> > lot of thoughts and ideas filtered through to me LOUD and clear.
> >
> > I've tried hard to implement as much stuff we talked about as possible
> while
> > at the same time giving them a polished look that I think we got
> together to
> > do in the first place. Some elements you might not agree with and I'll
> try
> > and explain my thought process (I'm getting better at this, whereas a
> year
> > and a half I was pretty rubbish at it).
> >
> > Where the hell are the tabs you monkey?
> > I'm sorry but I never liked them. They grew on me, but not completely.
> What
> > I've done here is take a step back and see what we currently have in the
> wp
> > admin. I've used our convention of highlighting the current view in a
> tab,
> > and the colour coordination right now makes it very easy to distinguish
> > where we actually are in the page. I've shown Matt one page and he
> > mentioned/thought that the menu was too close together. I disagree, but
> > that's a personal preference. I'm not going to argue for a few pixels to
> be
> > honest with you, but what I don't want is something like we currently
> have.
> > It's far too large. No point whatsoever.
> >
> > Where the hell is the name of the blog?
> > Why do you need it? Do you need your admin panel to remind you what
> you've
> > called your blog? Now the only reason I can think of is if you've got
> > multiple blogs and you;ve got several of them open. If this is a serious
> > problem then I guess we can find a place where the name can be
> incorporated
> > (maybe afterr Your WordPress for Broken Kode, or whatever). Keep the top
> > uncluttered and simple.
> >
> > Getting out of the admin panel.
> > This is either going to the site, or logging off. So they are next to
> each
> > other. Very simple very easy. Yes I'm using the silk icons. I like them,
> > They're nice and while you might say they're overused, until we get
> someone
> > to do proper icons then we might as well use a good looking set like
> this.
> > It's not like it's going to be worse than not having them.
> >
> > How many colours?
> > I've effectively used the following colours in the entire admin panel:
> > 3 shades of blue. These colours are used for links and for text
> throughout
> > the admin panel as well. Brings a complete unity to the whole thing.
> > 3 shades of grey. The background of the admin panel itself. and then the
> two
> > different shades of highlights used for distinguishing elements in a
> list
> > (like in the links or whatever).
> > White. Used exclusively in the text boxes for obvious reasons.
> > Yellow text has also been used for the WARNING messages (but more on
> those
> > just below).
> >
> > System messages.
> > See while I really like the colours as visual indicators, it was
> something
> > that I didn't get rid of easily. I did fight this a bit but I honestly
> was
> > trying to make it seem more cohesive. The thing is  I honestly loved
> what
> > Mike had done for the login box message so I utilised that throughout.
> The
> > system messages all come in the dark blue rounded rectangles and the
> colour
> > of text and icon indicate (along with the text itself) whether it's a
> bad
> > thing or a good thing. The good messages are all in blue (so the success
> and
> > the update available). Bad stuff in yellow.
> >
> > Buttons
> > As Joen has rightly said on numerous occasions all real buttons should
> be
> > left to the OS to sort out. However there are a couple of instances
> where we
> > need link buttons and I've made these stand out more by giving them a
> > rounded grey or dark blue background depending on what it actually
> does.This
> > can be seen in the plugins, in the themes page etc.
> >
> > Ajax
> > One thing you'll have noticed that we've not really talked about is all
> this
> > ajaxy loading business. This is an idea I've nicked from Michael again.
> > Specifically from his archives menu which is very cool indeed. The idea
> to
> > just use that in the entire admin panel came after I was looking for a
> > solution to the whole theme preview and what would actually look decent.
> Now
> > I don't know how realistic I'm being with all of this. I don't know
> which
> > browsers will die, but I'm willing to bet that if opodo.co.uk or
> > expedia.co.uk can sort it out to work in IE and FF then we shouldn't
> have
> > any problem getting this to work in the admin panel. This is a great
> visual
> > indicator because many times WP does take it's merry time to deal with
> > things, which would be fine if we were notified about it. When we met up
> in
> > November Matt you were fishing for additional features. At the time I
> didn't
> > actually have a proper idea for you, this however to me is one of those,
> > ideas that will be GOLDEN and ELEVATE wp completely and utterly above
> the
> > rest. In MANY MANY ways. To me it's a usability issue.
> >
> > Sidebar messages
> > This is for the new user. This is for the person that doesn't use WP all
> > that often and when they do they get confused. This is for the little
> man
> > that gets scared and runs away. This is definitely a usability issue.
> For
> > the hardened user it's not all that important that this text is there.
> It's
> > not completely obtrusive, just sits there. This does eat into the
> overall
> > real estate however in many ways this is available to be exploited. Not
> > always but oftentimes.
> >
> > MAX Width
> > Which brings me to something that I really wish could be put in here,
> even
> > though I know you'll ignore me here, but I really wish we have a max
> width.
> > I know it's not compatible with IE, but who cares. It just means that
> those
> > users who choose not to use a standard compliant browser will have it
> > stretch to the end, while those that use ff get to see a tight looking
> admin
> > panel. It's just a thought (one that I will probably be modding my admin
> css
> > for anyway but I thought I'd mention it here because I really think it's
> not
> > something that is difficult to have...or am I wrong?
> >
> > Uploading images
> > Erm yeah, dunno what you guys were thinking with this one. It's nice but
> not
> > very practical to use, not accessible and not very clear. I've used the
> same
> > options but made it a tab bit better. I'm sure Mike Little will
> appreciate
> > the changes here.
> >
> > WordPress logo
> > Ignore the blue ones. That was the original idea, but then I was going
> for
> > consistency which is why it's white in accordance with the log in page.
> >
> > Login Page
> > I know it's like beating a dead horse. I just want to say that I've
> changed
> > nothing, except the fact that it's not a sticker/tab/ipod thing and that
> > there is no gradient. The only reason I did this is because of
> consistency.
> > I wanted the login page to feel as though it belongs to the rest of the
> > admin panel,which a floating thing really didn't. No drop shadows
> anywhere
> > so it just seemed out of place.
> >
> >
> > Final thoughts
> > The idea now is for you guys to look at the stuff and jot down your
> likes
> > and dislikes. I'm in the process of cleaning up the actual files so that
> > everyone can edit them at will. Mull them over. I'm not saying they're
> > perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination but I definitely believe
> > they're a step in the right direction. Hopefully between us we'll be
> able to
> > massage it all into the final form that we want it to exist in.Thecoders
> > have got a decent amount of work ahead of them I'm sure but hey that's
> got
> > to be fun right?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> --
> Aloha,
> Michael Heilemann
> http://binarybonsai.com
>
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