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Comps for the header/nav design tweaks are in, and the results are mixed. Some people just moved a few things around, while others proposed a new style altogether. We won’t make any major changes to style in 2.8, but if the vote leans toward a submission that proposes it, we’ll do some user testing and make a decision for early 2.9 (which, now that we think of it, is probably the right thing to do anyway. )
Below are the links to the screenshots that were submitted. Please review each one (I’d open them all in tabs so I could look back and forth while they are all large size, because the voting poll just uses thumbnails), then choose the one you think looks the best/is the most usable.
This poll was supposed to close at 8pm NY time on Tuesday (today), but we’re going to leave it open for an extra day. The voting poll will now be closed at 8pm NY time on Wednesday (that’s 2am Thursday, UTC). If you want to discuss the entries’ pros/cons, this thread would be a good place.
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Jane: It is a thorn in my side that the blog name header is above the “dashboard” nav section in the admin, since in MU installations and with plugins (like stats), things in the Dashboard section span multiple blogs. Makes more sense for the header to head only the per-blog content area.
Mark: I agree about the header. “This is the menu, this is the content.”
All: Yep.
Five minutes later…
Mark: What do you guys this of this quick mockup I just did, playing with the admin header?
Jane: I like it that the nav is not under the header. Might need some styling help. I was also thinking maybe the favorites menu should drop down into the white h2 area by screen options/help tabs.
Ryan: Menu color to the top with blog title pushed over and favorites next to screen options sounds quite nice.
Jane: I’ll ask Matt Thomas if he could style it [ed. note: Matt Thomas created the visual style for 2.7], and we can see what people think, maybe post on wpdevel for feedback.
Ryan: If it’s quick, maybe we could even get it into 2.8.
ACT II
Matt T: Here are some comps based on what you told me.
Jane: Cool, but where are Screen Options and Help tabs?
Matt T: Still working on that.
Jane: Hm. Wonder if there’s time to open this up to community designers? I know we’re in freeze, and it’s no notice, but you didn’t get any notice either when we dropped this styling request on your lap a few hours ago. That’s the way open software development works: sometimes the best ideas come at the last minute!
Matt T: I’m all for letting the community take a stab at it. Especially if they come up with something brilliant to do with the Screen Options and Help tabs.
Jane: I’ll ask Ryan about release date and see if there’s time. I know they wanted your style recommendations today.
Act III
Ryan: Tuesday is probably doable, no later than that for final delivery of style and any gradient graphics, etc.
Jane: Awesome! People will hate me for the short notice after the has-patch marathon, but since it’s a small project and over the weekend, and wasn’t even something anyone was planning until a few hours ago, I’m *really hoping* people will take this for what it is, an attempt to give more people input into an upcoming visual change in the interface, even if it’s not a huge one.
Ryan: Would have the benefit of warning people that header and menu will be changed a bit.
Jane: And we can have a vote. If I can get all the materials together and post in the morning, that would give 2 days of design time for submissions on Monday, and if we do a day of voting Tuesday, that’s 3 days notice for the vote. I’ll make sure to post to all the lists, etc.
Ryan: Will we announce with comps from Matt T as examples of what we’re thinking?
Jane: I’ll write up the UX reasons for considering the change, and Matt T can provide some style guidelines and his original comps so no one will have to waste time mocking up the basic screen layout.
Ryan: That would help set the scope. We just want tweaks here and there, given the timing.
Jane: Woot!
On Your Mark, Get Set…
Okay, so here’s the deal. Modifying the nav/header to be a little nicer is was a last-minute design idea, and if it can’t be worked out in the time we have left before 2.8 (which is very little), we’ll just wait until 2.9 to work on it. But! If someone comes up with something the community really likes and it doesn’t break any of the design guidelines for the rest of WordPress, we could sneak it in.
UX and design guidelines for this mini-project are posted here (so as not to clog up anyone’s feed reader with big graphics). Read through the UX stuff, check out the comps Matt Thomas mocked up last night (with absolutely no notice, for the record). Use the .psd as your base, and when it’s time to submit your ideas, make a .jpg or .png and post a link to it in the comments on this post. (Note: Only comments containing a link to a design submission using this format will be approved. For general discussion about this design challenge or any of the submissions, please head into the #wordpress-dev IRC channel.)
Submit the link to your comps by 1am Tuesday, April 28 UTC (7pm Monday, April 27, New York time). If you have questions or want early feedback, we’ll be in and out of the #wordpress-dev IRC channel between now and then.
Once we’ve received the submissions, we’ll post a voting survey (much simpler than the icon survey; this one will be more of poll, just choose the one you like best) as soon as possible, and will post the link to it here as soon as it’s online. We’ll only keep voting open for one day because of the 2.8 deadline, so put it on your calendar if you think you’ll forget. Voting will close at 2am Wednesday, April 29 UTC (8pm Tuesday, April 28, New York time). Results will be announced the following day.
* Chats above are a conglomeration of actual chats.
Reminder: Only comments containing a link to a design submission will be published here. All other comments will be deleted.
If you want to leave a public comment about this contest, the design, etc., I’ve created a thread in the forums that you can use. Please discuss these things there. If you leave a regular comment here on this blog, no one will be able to reply to you, because only actual links to design submissions will be posted in the comments here.
Two more new photo and graphics editing software have been added to the Free Drawing and Painting Software, Image and Photo Editing Programs
page. The new image/photo editors boasts a large number of features that make it easy for you to create, edit or touch up your pictures. There are now 10 free picture editors listed on that page, as well as 3 free
3D Content Creation programs. Who said that there's no such thing as a free lunch?
A new editor has been added to the Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page.
CodeLobster PHP Edition is a code editor for PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS and it has numerous facilities to make it easy to work on such code. It has autocompletion facilities
for PHP, JavaScript, SQL, HTML and CSS, a PHP debugger, class view, project management, syntax highlighting, context sensitive help, browser preview, and so on.
If hand-coding in HTML is not your cup of tea, and you prefer to use a What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get (WYSIWYG) web editor, take a look at
the other editors listed on the Free Web Editors page.
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