I’ve been thinking a little about the design of PowerPoint, WordPress, and WordPress.com lately. More specifically, I’ve been thinking about Edward Tufte’s criticism of how the design of the PowerPoint software is to blame for the Challenger disaster.
Tag: WordPress
WordPress commit
This weekend, a whole new set of committers were announced at the first ever WordCamp US. I was among those #blessed with commit.
What the heck is commit?
For those of you who don’t hang around making Internet all day, commit is just a term for the ability to send code somewhere. In this case, it members of the WordPress community entrusted me with the ability to approve and send code to the nightly build of WordPress. Historically, there haven’t been many people with this access so it’s a pretty big honor and a sign of trust. I take it very seriously.
So here’s what happened…
Unlike Mel, I did not find out in a bar. I was on the way to the store to get some well-deserved drinks for one of the organizers when I got a ping from Nacin. It went something like this:
This was great news already. When I originally created my account, my username was “Michael Arestad”… With the space. This meant that no one could mention me on any WordPress.org site. I was thrilled to finally have this fixed for me!
Then he followed up with something fairly ominous:
Oh? There is? I was immediately pondering what that meant and trying to figure out scenarios where it would make sense to remove all spaces from names. Way off.
It turns out, the real reason for the name change was so I could become a committer.
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
The next few days were a bit of a blur partly because the conference was crazy, but that one completely unreal fact was bouncing around my head like Flubber™ wreaking all sorts of havoc.
Then Sunday happened. The new committers were tasked with committing something by the end of the day at the Contributor Day. This is when reality set in for us. I can tell you both Mel and I freaked out quite a bit even submitting a small change.
I have to say I am incredibly honored. I am one among very few designers who have commit. I plan to do my very best help guide the design of WordPress and maybe (if I’m lucky and have help) simplify some of those totes cray CSS selectors.
I was given commit with brilliant folks who I have the utmost respect for. Congrats to Mel Choyce (also a designer!!!), Rachel Baker, Joe Hoyle, Eric Lewis, Mike Schroder, and Pascal Birchler!
Fun fact
Mel Choyce was one of the first people I worked with in my initial attempt to contribute to core. It was on CEUX (rest in peace) which was an effort to introduce content blocks into the editor. Content blocks bring people together.
WordPress Dark Admin concept
I spent a couple evenings a week or so working on an updated design for WordPress. I just wanted to see where I could go with it. There’s no current plan to implement it (other than maybe spinning up another MP6 and fiddling with things). It’s far from feature complete, but I think it’s at a good point to share and get some feedback.
The dashboard
The site activity head map is the headliner change here (other than, you know a bunch of other stuff). I think it’s time we did some encouragement right up front from the dashboard at a glance. If you look closely, you can see the dropdown that I was imagining would allow changing what information was presented on the heat map (comment activity, viewers, etc).
The top bar has been totally removed as a thing. You’ll see a bit more in the next screenshot. It’s still there in spirit, but no longer feels like yet another toolbar.
The Editor
I took some ideas from some of the work we’ve been doing on WordPress.com as well as some of the ideas I implemented in Press This V1. (still missing pieces like the kitchen sink) I’m not sold on the right column meta boxes yet and haven’t messed much with custom fields, but it’s a start.
Settings
I think it’s about time Settings got some major love.
Thoughts?
I’d love to hear your thoughts and if you’re interested on jamming on something like this. Go!
Adios Vagrant, hello again MAMP (Pro)
I’ve been using VVV (Varying Vagrant Vagrants) for a bit over a year now with a few helper scripts for WordPress development primarily, but alas it’s time to end our relationship. The upkeep time isn’t worth it. It’s caused my computer to crash on a few occasions now. I’m not saying it’s bad by any means (it’s pretty dang awesome when it’s working), but it’s a bit more than I need with more moving pieces than I’d like.
Here’s a bit on my process moving from VVV to other stuff.
Continue reading “Adios Vagrant, hello again MAMP (Pro)”
Editing the editor
Photo via Jeff Golenski
Years don’t belong in event names
We’ve all seen it. A bunch of us have done it. We add the current year to the name of the event. Usually something like this:
WordCamp Denver 2015
#wcden15
This seems cool and is a pretty common convention convention (wordplay!). It is, however, totally silly. Pro/con time of using years:
Pressed it
Clip it, edit it, publish it. Get familiar with the new and improved Press This. From the Tools menu, add Press This to your browser bookmark bar or your mobile device home screen. Once installed you can share your content with lightning speed. Sharing your favorite videos, images, and content has never been this fast or this easy.