Usability

When I recommend to someone that they should use Drupal for a project it is not uncommon for them to question my wisdom on the subject. Those new to Drupal are often shocked by Drupal's initial learning curve, no rich text editor in the core, and a user interface with a longer workflow than it really should be. As powerful and functional as Drupal can be it historically has had usability issues.

I received an email the other day from Hilary McCarthy promoting Platformic.  Platformic is an online Web CMS or what her company likes to call an Online Web Develop Environment.  As usual, I'll let the email do most of the talking in this post.

Hi, I wanted to make sure that you saw that Platformic is announcing version 3.0 of its enterprise web development software, an end-to-end online web development environment and content management platform that allows businesses to quickly and easily build/update websites in real-time without sacrificing creativity or writing code.

A couple years ago we decided to use MediaWiki for a wiki implementation at work.  Wikipedia uses MediaWiki for their wiki application so we felt it was the right choice for our needs.  One concern my team had was that MediaWiki didn't come with a rich text editor (no WYSIWYG).

While a number of us may be fine with using wikitext or HTML to edit our wiki pages, I believe the majority in any organization prefers to edit their pages with a friendly user interface similar to that found on their word processor. At the time, we tried a number of solutions but found neither the suggested TinyMCE or FCKeditor implementation integrated that well with mediaWiki.  So for our project we settled with wikEd, an editor that still required users to work with wiki syntax but surprising a very good tool for most users.

During a lunch conversation last week with Deane Barker of Gadgetopia and Blend Interactive, I mentioned my frustrations with MediaWiki not having available a good WYSIWYG solution.  Deane suggested that I look at a more recent implementation of MediaWiki plus FCKeditor. This project is being supported by the developers of FCKeditor themselves.

Earlier today, Matthew Mullenweg announced the official release of Wordpress 2.7.  This new version of WordPress is a dandy with significant improvements made to the WordPress administrative interface and dashboard.  The choices you now have to customizing our blogging workflow is almost endless.

While we could start reading off from the changelogs for all the new features in WordPress 2.7, It's probably just as easy to show you the video.

"The usability of a content management system is paramount. If authors and site owners can’t work out how to use the CMS, you’ve got nothing. The CMS can have all the functionality in the world, but usability trumps it all."

 - James Robertson, Practical ways to assess CMS usability, Column Two, November 25, 2008

As we mentioned more than a month ago, Firefox 3 is expected to sport a new look. Some of the more popular online magazines are starting to take notice and helping to fan some excitement on the new look. On a blog at Wired a Firefox 3 related post can be found, Catch a Glimpse of Firefox 3's Sleek, Sexy New Digs.

Some of the changes planned for the final release of Firefox 3 include a complete visual makeover with platform-specific skins designed to integrate the look of Firefox into your OS of choice.

Those that have followed my writings (even from the WebCMSForum days) know I've spent about the past year or two dealing with an aging  PC.  Even the wife, who doesn't always appreciate the geek part of her husband, says it is time for a computer upgrade.  When she says it's time, you know the deadline is near to order up a new computer.

For the past several years I've configured my home PCs with a dual-boot of Windows/Linux.  While there are some things I don't like about Apple's propriety hardware for it's OS, the need for something different has me considering purchasing a Mac.  However, as I posted at the Open Source Community, I've started to wonder if over time the desktops for Linux and the Mac won't be that much different from one another.

KDE 4.0: Why I likely won't get a Mac -

Desktop Linux has an article and shapshots out on the first alpha version of KDE 4.0. The article is titled, KDE 4.0 alpha arrives!.

Features in this alpha version of KDE include:

• A new visual appearance through Oxygen (think Aqua)

In case you missed the news, the Website for FCKeditor is now using the Drupal content management system (CMS). FCKeditor is a HTML text editor with a WYSIWYG interface and is commonly utilized in Web-based applications. The following was posted at the FCKeditor site:

We're proud to announce that, from today, the FCKeditor web site is running over Drupal, one of the best Open Source CMSs out there. After a long research, Drupal has proved to be the best solution to handle our half a million page views monthly, with flexibility and reliability.

I'm working on an ecommerce site using osCommerce to enable the shopping cart functionality for my client's online store. This is the first time I've used osCommerce so I'm still working on improving my comfort level with the application. osCommerce is open source and released under the GNU General Public License. According to the osCommerce site: