Discuss: Low hanging fruit, aiming for 3.5
What can we identify as low hanging fruit from the user tests run thus far or other experiences? What existing features can we quickly iterate on and make better?
Let’s put one piece of fruit per comment, and then discuss each (or add your +1) in replies to that comment. Be as specific as possible – perhaps mention the item, what makes it not quite right, what can be better, and what we can do about it.
JarretC 10:40 pm on July 3, 2012 Permalink
Add Media Icon – Personally I think this should be a button with ‘Add Media’ as the value or something similar but leave it in the same area.
Isaac Keyet 10:36 pm on July 11, 2012 Permalink
+10 definitely low hanging fruit that would make a big impact for beginners. Especially if the media UI is kept in it’s modal.
lag47 6:57 pm on July 14, 2012 Permalink
+1
Kevin Miller 10:47 pm on July 3, 2012 Permalink
Definitive Admin UI Style Guide. We have this http://codex.wordpress.org/User:TECannon/UI_Pattern_and_Style_Guide, however it would be a huge help to developers to know how meta boxes/widget forms/etc should be styled and laid out. Knowing what tools and styles are in our toolbox would make things a lot easier to figure out.
helenyhou 12:35 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink
FYI, we have http://dotorgstyleguide.wordpress.com, which is linked over in the sidebar here under Resources & Reference. It needs updating, though! Anybody who wants to take a stab at helping update it, take a thorough look at it and then let me or @chexee know.
Mel Choyce 11:39 pm on July 3, 2012 Permalink
One problem identified in lessbloat’s user tests was the color picker. All three users had problems figuring out how to use it.
The current color picker (farbtastic) has an outer color ring that lets you pick hue and an inner color block that lets you control value. However, changing the outer ring alone doesn’t change the inside block, so even if you’ve changed your hue from yellow to blue, the selected color remains yellow. Users were changing the outer ring, but didn’t notice that they needed to change the inside block to get a new color.
One solution could be to use a different color picker. saracannon put together a list of different color pickers: http://sararcannon.dropmark.com/40150. Out of these, a few of us liked jQuery miniColors (http://sararcannon.dropmark.com/40150/388182). It is definitely easier to use, and when you change the hue, it also changes the selected color.
Overall suggestion: Swap Farbtastic for jQuery miniColors.
lessbloat 2:03 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
+1
I was looking for a fun little project to work on over the weekend (an excuse to dig around in core). Should we decide to go this route, I put together a quick patch to replace farbtastic with MiniColors:
http://cl.ly/2q2K3G371O2V3U420W3q
I’ve not done any testing on it yet though.
Marty Thornley 9:42 pm on July 11, 2012 Permalink
+1 for mini colors. Just added it as the only workable color picker I could find for a number of reasons. More straight forward interface and SUPER easy to add to any input.
helenyhou 11:35 pm on July 6, 2012 Permalink
A related thing to hit while we’re at it: making them consistent across various uses. #19616
Brent Logan 6:40 am on July 4, 2012 Permalink
This is an “other experiences” item. I would love to have the horizontal menu offset to the right a bit so it is not directly above the left-side vertical menu. When I aim for the Dashboard item and overshoot, going over the WordPress logo or the blog name, its menu drops down, covering where I really wanted to be. I have to retreat so the dropdown menu will hide before I can try again.
lessbloat 5:46 pm on July 7, 2012 Permalink
Thanks Brent. One of the users we tested reported this on the other side of the toolbar (with the user menu) as well. I’m not certain that we’d want to move those items out from the side though. Anyone have any other thoughts on how to combat this effect?
Elio 1:19 pm on July 4, 2012 Permalink
The link to go to the site, maybe changing the label will do.
The Add Media button could look more like a, well, button.
lessbloat 3:42 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Figure out somewhere that we can add a visible link (not hidden under a dropdown) from wp-admin to view their site. IMO, this should be visible from any page of the admin.
lessbloat 3:43 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Make “Insert into post” more noticeable – perhaps just add a class of “button-primary”
lessbloat 12:38 pm on July 6, 2012 Permalink
#21177
lessbloat 3:43 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Is there anything we can do to give a better indication that the “Preview” button opens in a new tab?
lessbloat 3:43 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Add button styling to “Customize” link on the themes page (Make it a bit more prominent – a la WP.com)
lessbloat 3:44 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Make sure we add customizer link prominently in the welcome screen.
helenyhou 7:22 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Also, perhaps as an item in the Appearance menu, maybe even as the top item? I don’t see changing the theme as the first task that comes to mind when managing the appearance of your site.
lessbloat 3:44 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Could we take a stab at making the drop downs in the toolbar look more like drop downs?
lessbloat 3:44 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
Thoughts on changing “+ New” to either “Add New” or “+ Add New”? Any other ideas on how to make this drop down stand out (without being overbearing)?
lessbloat 3:45 pm on July 5, 2012 Permalink
The blog drop down menu changes depending on whether you’re on the admin, or on your site. Could we try and rethink this behavior to keep it consistent?
saltcod 1:12 pm on July 6, 2012 Permalink
I’ve always had an issue with Settings > Privacy.
I think it might be best housed somewhere else, or at least renamed. I was thinking last week that the bottom of the Customizer panel might be a good place for it—as it is only two radio options.
If we’re not open to moving it, then I’d love to see it renamed “Privacy” -> “Site Visibility”
http://cl.ly/2V1z1y1m1F170V3v180k
helenyhou 6:31 pm on July 10, 2012 Permalink
It’s important to note that settings can be added to the screen by plugins, so it’s not necessarily just two radio options. “Site Visibility” intrigues me, though.
saltcod 1:25 pm on July 6, 2012 Permalink
This is extremely minor, I recognize, but I’ve found that there isn’t enough differentiation of sections in certain areas. Take the About and Writing Settings as two examples. Adding a little top padding and a border-top makes these pages much more readable for me—and defines the sections within much more clearly.
http://cl.ly/1X0g4018122t1l3x3x2D
http://cl.ly/1s2A0e472p3n281Y3h26
helenyhou 2:28 pm on July 11, 2012 Permalink
There are a few tickets related to a consistency sweep for link/button text and colors in 3.5. Putting them here so we can reduce the chances of forgetting.
#15956: Remove user link should be red
#20426: Make Delete link red (media)
saltcod 11:10 am on July 20, 2012 Permalink
I’m not sure if this fruit is low-hanging, but I think the way menus are created could really use some love. I watched my wife change a menu last night and it wasn’t pretty. She already had a top nav menu (pages that she’d created got added to it automatically) and she wanted to reorder these pages. It went something like this:
1. She went to Appearance => Menus and found that there was no menu to configure. But she already had a top menu! So this really didn’t make sense to her. http://cl.ly/image/3o1L0N2V2i1q
2. I explained how it worked, and that she first needed to create a new menu. She added a “Top Menu”.
3. She adds her pages to the newly created Top Menu, but of course they don’t show up in the front end. http://cl.ly/image/3V1J3J2Q0E1J
4. I tell her to set the Top Menu as the Primary Menu and then we’re good to go.
She was expecting to go in and re-order the items she already had in her top menu. I know that this really isn’t low-hanging at all, but I wonder if there’s a way to better convey the logic of what’s going on here: that WordPress, by default, adds existing pages to the top menu until you officially create a Top Menu and manually add and reorder pages.
One last thing: she had no idea what “Automattically add new top-level pages” did. And neither did I =) http://cl.ly/image/2X1r1H0t1f1H