Want to get involved? See the handbook and optionally drop into #design to chat. Most active design work happens in the block editor project, consider dropping into Needs design or Needs design feedback.
There’s a WordPress Component Library in Figma. Duplicate to edit, direct access is reserved for the design team.
I put THX38 0.7.1 through some testing. Here are some clips showing the main points of interest. Most are around a minute or so in length, some are shorter.
Accidentally clicks into the customizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings. and gets disoriented, first click on the “Customize” button doesn’t work (not sure why), thinks the magnifying glass hover icon indicates search:
While the themes page is blazingly fast 🙂 the customizer is slow:
Suggests the “Delete Theme” button should be red all the time:
Overlooks “Customize” button on the active theme:
“Delete Theme” is a little hard to find for this user:
Wishes clicking on the large screenshot in the modal would show a full view:
Wants more screenshot detail:
“Delete Theme” process not immediately visible, but found fairly easily:
Theme description details are a little too technical, i.e. “post format-packed,” HTMLHTML HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. It is a markup language that is used in the development of web pages and websites., SEO:
“Delete Theme” is easy:
Keeps clicking the back button instead of the “x” in the modal and it disorients her a little:
Tries right-clicking to delete:
If you’d like to see the full videos, you can download them here: THX38 001, THX38 002, THX38 003, THX38 004, THX38 005.
What would make finding really good themes easier? (survey question responses)
Key Observations
All in all, the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party is in really good shape. It’s fast! The “delete theme” link doesn’t get triggered accidentally but is still relatively easy to find. All of the bugs found via user testing were fixed in plugin version 0.8. If I could vote for two updates for v1, I would recommend: remove preview and activate hover buttons, change hover icon to a “view” symbol.
The past week we’ve been committing significant updates to the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party.
Here’s a list of the changes that went in for version 0.7 (major props to @shaunandrews):
The keyboard navigation is becoming a pretty nice way to quickly flip through themes.
Functionality wise it’s getting there, but we still have to keep polishing. (I’m being told modals are broken in Firefox.) We are a small team, so any reviews and suggestions are welcome — code or otherwise. Next up for JS rendering is looking into scaling issues (when, say, you have 200+ themes).
We’ve been busy building and improving the plugin. We are approaching the point of a full feature prototype, which will allow us to start testing smaller incremental changes.
I committed the first pass at the browse themes screen based on the mockups we’ve discussed before:
By the way, we are running a bit short on development resources, so if you are proficient in PHPPHP PHP (recursive acronym for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor) is a widely-used open source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development and can be embedded into HTML. http://php.net/manual/en/intro-whatis.php. and/or JS and want to contribute to this project, please, either chime in to one of our weekly chats or pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” me directly. We are using Backbone to build all the theme views. We started a short document with the current tasks.
We have two tasks going on: make theme switching work with the current prototype, and finish implementing theme fetching to the install-themes screen.
Things have been in motion for the themes project. I’ve been working on making the pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party prototype ready for some initial testing. It’s looking like this:
@shaunandrews ran a test with it, and here’s the video.
Compared to how bad last test went, it’s pretty cool to see the dramatic effect the “add new theme” blockBlock Block is the abstract term used to describe units of markup that, composed together, form the content or layout of a webpage using the WordPress editor. The idea combines concepts of what in the past may have achieved with shortcodes, custom HTML, and embed discovery into a single consistent API and user experience. had. (Also helped by the removal of the tabbed interface and extra information.) The user grasped immediately that she was seeing some themes that were already available to her blog, and how she could add more. Fairly straightforward, which is all this test was about.
Then, of course, as soon as she got to the filters page everything went down again, but we already expected that — still good to have one more test showing the same fundamental problem there.
On last Tuesday’s meeting we discussed the different mockups that were shared so far, apart from the plugin ones.
It seems we have mostly two directions to try for themes.php. The one the plugin is building (simplify the screens, remove the tabs, but keep a distinction between “your themes” screen and “installing new ones”), and one that merges installing new themes with your currently installed themes on the same screen. As a quick analogy, themes.php as your apps folder, or themes.php as an app store. Another possible outcome is that this screen could render a specific experience for new users alone.
Shaun is polishing his prototype so we can test it. We argued that it would be hard to know which of these two was the better one, since we would also need to test with people that already have a bunch of themes installed and don’t care much about the discovering new ones part. But having some insight is still good.
Finally, we talked briefly about multi-screenshot support. The plugin has a proof of concept implementation, showing the screenshots on the expanded view of a theme as a gallery. To test it, add a screenshot-2.png image to the root of a theme (up to five). Also relevant coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress. ticket: #19816.
Team THX38 had its first formal meeting yesterday. See logs.
We talked about the things we see as more problematic, and spent some time discussing Filters/Search, as we identified that as an area with huge room for improvement. If you have read Dave’s post on design processes, this in area where we would benefit from exploring a bunch of quick directions that we can later test, so feel free to submit ideas.
Shaun also shared the usertest video he ran. Some interesting points from the video:
Comparisons to existing theme/template showcases were brought up: WP.com themes, Squarespace, Tumblr, Weebly, to name a few. The plan is to report back the findings at next meeting, so those interested, please, grab one and research what you like and don’t like (with images!) for the discussion. Put your name in the comments so we know we have things covered.
I set up an initial plugin for the project that you can grab at https://wordpress.org/plugins/thx38/. Note: it currently makes themes.php unusable, it’s only meant for us to play with as we go. It setups your theme collection in Backbone.
We are switching the day of our chats to Tuesdays. So next gathering will be on August 27th at 18:00utc.
Hello all. Team THX38 will be working on the Theme Experience project, spanning the theme admin screens as well as improving the .org directory. Check our initial overview for information on our goals and the pain points we want to address. We also have some visual concepts there to start the conversation.
We’ll be meeting in #wordpress-coreCore Core is the set of software required to run WordPress. The Core Development Team builds WordPress.-plugins on Monday, August 19 18:00 UTC. If this works out we’ll keep this time going forward.
@matveb (lead), @samuelsidler, @melchoyce, @shaunandrews, @jacobdubail. The following people have also expressed interest in helping when time permits: @helen, @bpetty, @sabreuse
If you’re interested in contributing to the project, leave a comment here and let us know!
For next week, Shaun will be working on running some tests around themes.php, and we’ll also be setting up a pluginPlugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party soon so we can start playing with these ideas. See you around!
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