Please stop changing the UI in every new version!

  • Stop making significant changes to the UI!

    Imagine everytime Microsoft produced a new version of Word, they changed everything how the basic features of the program function and where to find them. Since 1.5, this is what’s been happening to WordPress.

    I love WordPress. But I hate how I’m forced to learn whatever latest and greatest UI the developers have thought up of *this* time. I still have a 1.5 installation and it is *easy* to use — everything you need is right there. The only significant improvement was adding an upload box to the “Write post” section. Which was fixed in the 2.0-2.2 release.

    Then 2.5-2.6 decided it was time to move everything around. Great, thanks. A year later, and I’m still looking for common features, like how to upload an image (oh, there it is, a tiny icon buried in the writing interface!). And wondering why “Design” isn’t a “Setting” and instead appears next to Write and Manage (things you do every day… hopefully you’re not re-designing your site every day!).

    Now for 2.7, we’re being told everything needs to be moved around again. Wow. Instead of coming up with a bullet-proof MT import routine that actually works, we keep re-arranging the UI as though some designers simply have too much time on their hands.

    I’m sorry, but I — and I suspect many other long-time users of WordPress — are tired of it. At least provide a checkbox that says, “Keep old UI” in the settings.

    Upgrading to a new version of software shouldn’t mean having to re-learn everything about how it’s organized. Improvements should be incremental, especially in point releases. Not, “Hey, we haven’t moved everything around yet again in a year, let’s do that!”

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  • Moderator Samuel Wood (Otto)

    (@otto42)

    www.ads-software.com Admin

    Imagine everytime Microsoft produced a new version of Word, they changed everything how the basic features of the program function and where to find them.

    Err… Last I checked, they do exactly that. Seen Office 2007 yet? ??

    That said, I do agree with you, however the 2.7 UI is much improved from 2.5 and 2.6 and so it’s hard to argue with it on that basis. Hopefully, this one will stick around a while.

    Basically, I think the whole crazyhorse UI was developed because 2.5’s UI change sucked so very, very much.

    Thread Starter docjohn

    (@docjohn)

    The vast, vast majority of people don’t care what’s “better” from a UI perspective or not. What they do care is continuity in their UI. Anybody will learn anything once. But the third time you ask them to learn it in as many years, well, then they start getting more than annoyed — their productivity suffers. The tool that’s supposed to make a simple task easy is getting in their way instead of simply helping them.

    I haven’t seen Word 2007. But I have been using Word since 2000 and can tell you that in the past 8 years, their UI has not significantly changed. And as you can tell from the negative feedback about the Word 2007 UI, change stinks for most users (no matter what the intention or rationale behind it). That could be a good argument why Vista wasn’t widely embraced as well — we all know XP, leave us alone and let us get our work done!

    I am completely UI agnostic — I don’t care what you put in front of me as long as I can figure out where the stuff is that I need to use. But it’s crazy when I have to think about not upgrading to the latest platform because the amount of re-learning that I and all my users will have to undertake because some set of people think a different UI is “better.”

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