[wp-hackers] Wordpress 1.5 downloads

[Elliotte Harold]

Jeff Minard wrote:

> The text area is resizeable. In fact, it will "stick" to the length you 
> determine once you do it (via a ccookie). Also, you can still set the 
> height on the text area in the options.

OK. I just noticed that. I still think it should be bigger by default, 
but that helps.

> 
>> 3. The category list is hidden behind a button rather than being up 
>> front as it is in 1.5.2. That means what used to be a one step process 
>> to change the category is now a two-step process. Ditto for the Post 
>> status, post slug, etc.
> 
> This is minorly contradicting with you next statement about the focus of 
> wordpress. If WP is to focus on writing, most of these things are 
> extremely supplimentary. Most the time anyone who's just going to blog 
> needs only two things:
> 
> 1) Title
> 2) Content
> 

All I can say is I need to do more. In particular, I choose a category 
for almost every post. I almost never leave it as "Uncategorized". Now 
that's a two-step process.

I also think the other options are well supported in 1.5.2. They're down 
below the main edit box where you can play with them if you like and 
easily ignore them if you don't. Now they're hidden. 1.5.2 has a nice 
design where the options are available but don't get in your way. now 
that they're not so available. It's minor, but it is a step backwards.

I'm curious. Has any actual user testing been done on WordPress? In 
other words, has anyone put non-developer users in front of a WordPress 
system, asked them to perform tasks, and watched them to see how they 
do, and what confuses them? I suspect the results would be informative. 
There are some other problems I've noticed in the UI, but so far those 
are all common to 1.5 and 2.0.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold  elharo at metalab.unc.edu
XML in a Nutshell 3rd Edition Just Published!
http://www.cafeconleche.org/books/xian3/
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