Now that I’ve played with the Movable Type 3.2 Beta for a bit, I have a thought. That thought is that it seems to me as if Six Apart is going for the ease-of-use crowd (in other words, people who haven’t used it and for who it needs to be easy). This, in and of itself, isn’t really a Bad Thing™.
But it does bug me when that line is crossed and the older users (uh, that’s me), who have already taken that curve, get thrown for another one simply to make it easier for new users. So the existing crowd has to learn over and over, to make it easier for new people? I don’t like that.
Two examples.
First, View Site. This friendly link has been lurking in the top navigation bar of the admin interface for at least two years. Though it’s also been in the left-hand navigation bar for at least as long, I’ve only rarely used that one. The top link is always the most handy for me. The bottom one almost always requires a scroll. A small scroll, but a scroll nonetheless. Well, it’s gone. Jay offers up an explanation, and it makes perfect sense. But it still requires a change in my behavior.
If the link doesn’t make sense among those other links in the top bar, how about dropping it by a few pixels and putting it next to the drop-down blog selection box? Then it’s in a related area, and it’s still right there at the top of the screen. I’d be more than willing to make that minor movement. I’d be happy about it even. Just taking it away is a royal pain!
Second, Default Templates. I’ve wondered for a while why, when I upgraded, I missed out on new templates. Mostly this was for mtview.php, which I realized was missing when I went to play with dynamic archives. So adding a feature into mt-upgrade.cgi, which is incidentally, a very cool idea, to handle the creation of missing templates, is great. The problem? It appears to create all missing templates, apparently based on name. So if I renamed my RSD template to, say, RRSD, guess what? I get a new one when the upgrade runs. Worse, it’s set to rebuild automatically. Yikes!
So now I have to go through my template list and get rid of, or at least turn off the rebuilding for, all these new templates, that I didn’t even realize would be there. Now I know that a lot of people keep the default templates and never would have such a thing happen. I don’t. I turn things off when I don’t need them. I rename them. I even (gasp) delete them from time to time. Now, presumably because some new users may miss out on something, I’m stuck with programming to the lowest common denominator.
I appreciate the need to appeal to Main Street. I do. But as someone who is very rarely actually a resident of Main Street, I hate it when things start to get dumbed down, because it invariably costs me time and effort. I’m sure this is even more so for folks who were there before I was (and that is a considerable group). I am also sure that I don’t know if I could do the same job. I just know it bugs me.
An otherwise excellent (to this point) beta product is simply marred by these little nit-picky things that make things go from smooth to, well, not quite as smooth. Instead of making life easy for all these new users, how about making life easy for us old fogies, too?
Please keep in mind – I know this is a beta product, unlike many products labeled beta presumably so that the publisher can get away without supporting them. I know it could change. Six Apart, as they have proven many times, generally listens very well to the feedback they see. So by the time you read this, it might not even be the same. It’s just that it bugs me now!
Comments
2 responses to “First Movable Type v3.2 Thoughts”
A couple of things in response. Number 1, we’ve found a new home for the View Site link near the top of the page. I think it’s included in Beta-2, but if not, the nightlies certainly have it. It’s close and still near the top of the page, but far enough from the system wide navigation so as not to confuse people.
As far as the default templates, that’s a really sticky spot. One of the greatest strengths of Movable Type is that it’s completely flexible and doesn’t impose rules about how or what you publish.
Don’t want a main index? Blow it away. Want to call your stylesheet something else? Want to have five? No problem. None of the templates outside of the system templates are special in any way. In order to be able to recognize certain template by something other than name, we would need to “bless and protect” them somehow, but in doing so, we automatically take away the flexibility and freedom to do what you want.
Sticking templates into a users blog is, as I think you mentioned in a bug report, not a good idea. And you’ll be happy to know that we decided against this. But to address your point about not having the new templates, we released the TemplateRefresh plugin, which makes it really simple.
As far as making life easy for you old fogies, I will point out that we’ve included so many incredible UI enhancements and features in this release that the program is a joy to use for our legacy users. From upgrade to the search-based interface to the easiest bulk action UI of any web-based app, better menus and filtering, etc etc etc. And let’s not forget about plugin advancements. Bootstrap module? Integrated plugin config? Oy. There’s a LOT there to love if your a long-time user.
Every piece of software must balance well between it’s old and new users. And you will of course realize that we have far, far, far more new users in the future than old users today. Making sure that we get it right not only for you, but for those who will soon come is very, very important to us.
Thanks for your feedback, Chad. I’m glad that we could address your issues before I even got a chance to read them. 🙂
Interesting indeed. This was on a 3.15 install (though those particular templates are anything but 3.15-specific). I’ll do some more playing with it to see if I can figure out why it did in this case. Maybe later this weekend. Anyone else see this behavior?