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Joen, a smart chap whom I read quite diligently perhaps passes the comment of the week:
Usability is not a Jackson Pollock painting.
Whilst Joen argues that Wordpress is the single best blogging platform out there, and to be fair his comments are true to an extent, it does suffer mix of legacy design elements with an assortment of new css-slicing techniques that result in a UI challenged (at best) product.
The interface is, quite frankly, shocking. Traversing the UI isn’t a fun process — and the less spoken of the template engine and it’s propensity to mix structure and presentation, the better. It’s not uncommon to hear the phrase “it should not be this hard” within the community.
The demo Joen points to is a classic example of why the Wordpress developers just don’t seem to “get” the idea of smart UI design — repeated vertical scrolling just to post and or edit an entry isn’t the bastion of great design.
The community has attempted to help out in the past and received little more than passing interest — amusingly whilst there is now some hint of ’shuttle’ in the 2.3.x releases, it’s at best a passing shadow of what could have been. Without a solid commitment to get it right, Wordpress will always be an ungainly and navigationally challenged beast.
Whilst
Habari may have been a haven for ex-Wordpress developers, it’s yet to really gain any traction. One wonders what would have been if the same creative and design flair had been welcomed by the Wordpress project team instead of the litany of excuses reasons why it’s always just too hard.
Came across this earlier today - could it be the open source alternative to OS X and Garageband1?
Coming this April… Ubuntu Studio.
A multimedia creation derivative of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu Studio is aimed at the linux audio, video and graphic enthusiast as well as professional. ~ Ubuntu Studio - Let your Creativity Fly
I’ve been pondering restarting podcasting, indeed Heilemann decided to volunteer me for a potential Habari podcast candidate2, in a recent comment via IRC. However the biggest stumbling block has been finding a Microsoft Windows, or Linux based audio editing software or platform that makes the process less intensive and time consuming, without breaking the bank in the process.
On the topic of habari, I came across an interesting post today.
Seems like there are too many cooks, but no head chef running the project, so everything is a long discussion. I understand the project is getting organized and whatnot, and as new people come in, their visions need to be dealt with, but I fear the project will split into two if someone doesn’t come in and get people organized. ~ D3 Habari
An interesting comment - which on the surface makes immediate sense. After all, how can any project survive without a ‘fearless leader’?
There’s a new kid on the block, who is set to shake up the Blog and CMS world in 2007.
Habari, a Swahili word that translates to ‘news’, is both an experiment in MOSS (Massively Open Source Software) and a fresh new look at blogging - think CMS meets WoW. Now, you may be thinking “great, another CMS, just what the world needs - when does the Web 2.0 hurting stop?!”, which, to be honest was my initial thought. But not for long.
Rather than being a fork ((.. such as forking from wordpress, b2, etc)) of an existing blog or CMS software, Habari seeks to take advantage of modern PHP versions and the features they provide - from scratch. But that’s not it’s sole claim-to-fame.
Open platform, open community.
Habari is different - it seeks to be inclusive of those interested in either providing code, able to test, report and perhaps fix bugs, have a flair for design, or indeed pretty much any other assistance that can be provided. The key to this, is the ‘all voices heard’ approach, where many, many voices are encouraged to help improve the product.
