Usability

This weekend while surfing the Net, I came across a blog about an average Mom who started to learn Ubuntu. She was trying to rate how appropriate tagline “Linux for human beings” really is and it got me curious. I started to read her series of posts entitled “The Ubuntu Chronicles: The Saga of Amber and Ubuntu“

What’s very interesting about Amber’s series of posts is that it gives some very good points on how well Ubuntu (Linux) has moved forward in terms of usability on the desktop. And some very good points which may very well help the community identify some improvement areas in terms of usability. Although I wouldn’t rate her as the average typical Mom, she has pretty much written things that provides some insight to how an average user might react to Ubuntu.

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After reading Jane’s post of Favorite Thing about 2.7 Beta and trying out WordPress 2.7 beta, I’m posting some of the things I really love about the upcoming WordPress 2.7 release. For starters, the new look has gotten even better.

To simply put it in the words of Boren’s blog post — it’s sexy. I love how it looks without sacrificing on simplicity. Being sleek on the look and feel and still focusing on functionality and speed. You can now expect to see more curves on the admin user interface and less of the sharp edges. The use of gradient backgrounds also provide a lot of visual enhancements. You’d also notice a lot more “mouse-over” functionality which helps to get the user’s attention on what can be done on a particular area of the screen.

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I’ve just read this interesting article from Slashdot, Google Adopts, Forks OpenID 1.0, which discusses an article published in NeoSmart about Google’s forking of the OpenID standard.

Open ID is a great concept of creating your own universally acceptable user login id that also allows you to protect your personal data for floating around all over the Net.

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How does being able to create/design the specifications of your next notebook, netbook or gamer’s notebook PC sound to you? I’m sure every notebook or netbook owner would want to voice out their opinion on how the next netbook or notebook will come out of production.

Well, here’s an exciting idea introduced by Intel and ASUS.

… consumers can collaborate with each other and with Intel and ASUS to design innovative new products. The plan is for the two companies to deliver to market what could be the world’s first community-designed PCs.

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Just to whet your appetite on the upcoming WordPress version 2.7, I’m posting a couple of screen shots of the new look and feel. Some pretty good usability features are going to the next version. The new version is replacing the top menu with some nice looking icons on the left side.

The change will maximize the screen area for tasks like editing or creating a post. This should be a welcome feature with the increased popularity of netbooks which offer less screen area.

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This morning when I got on my computer and visited the Yahoo home page, I got this new Yahoo! home page shown on my Firefox browser. What do you think about the new home page of Yahoo?

I like it, I think it’s more readable than the old Yahoo home page. The colors have also changed and and feel more light to the eyes. The Yahoo logo also has a new color (not anymore the red)?

I’ve been trying out the WordPress 2.7 nightly builds for some time now. WordPress 2.7 just entered into a feature freeze state. The new UI (user interface) is soooo so georgeous that it’s going to be a pain to wait for the release date.

You should see what Matt, Ryan and the WordPress guys have done. It looks like I can postpone having to buy a 22-inch monitor (but I probably doubt that for wanting a bigger screen). Here’s a quote from Jane of the WordPress Devt Team on the WordPress development blog on how they plan to do it:

… screens just to access sub-navigation menus; we wanted the most-used screens to be within a click or two at most. If you’ve been using the nightly builds, you got used to the arrow controls that allowed you to expand and contract the menus. Then you got used to the box-style with icons that not only opened and closed vertically, but could be minimized horizontally as well, leaving a remnant of icons to provide a kind of “advanced mode,” …

And a screen shot of the “add new” post screen:

It’s beautiful! What’s also great is that the menu on the left can be collapsed to just mere icons! Minimizing the screen area occupied by the menus (great guys)!

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I’ve finally installed a copy of WordPress 2.7 (still under development) from the svn on my computer last week and it’s looking good. The menus are now on the left side (looks like it’s time to think about a 1680×1050 22-inch monitor).

Lot’s of new stuff, like now you can already edit basic meta stuff without having to open and edit an article.

I love what seems to be a direction into putting the “media tools” stuff on the right side of the “add/edit post/page” screens ‘coz I think it’s a lot more easier to be able to interact with the media and the editor at the same time when creating a post.

I one of those people who’s interested in UI’s and usability and with my last post about the WordPress menu user survey, I decided to create a mock-up screen of the WordPress using Inkscape (trying to learn the software).

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