That was a pretty good evening actually. Went to my most favourite place in Camden (and currently in all of London as well) Tupello Honey, had some fantastic carrot cake straight from the over, PLENTY of icing on top, and a nice cappuccino. So I'm sitting there with Alfonso and we're discussing our 'other' lives outside the office. See the fonz is a kindred spirit in that sense, he's got just as much crap going outside of work as me; due to being older however he's mastered how to deal with a lot of it... I haven't...yet.
Wrote the list of things to do. I don't know about everyone else but I've write loads of these, sometimes I make a dent in them, othertimes not really. The thing is though, wrote all of them and started prioritizing the items. Strange but everything's kind of fallen into place. I do know exactly what is required at this point in time for me. It's very clear to me, at the same time it's going to be hard to stay on the actual direct line of action I've drawn up.
Development of Manji is actually only for tonight. I'm pleased to say 98% of it is complete. In fact I can probably go live pretty soon with version 1.0, however as Alphaoide (more on him later) pointed out, some more work needs to be done in cleaning up the php files, to fit into the theme structure that Ryan Boren has set up through his example of Kubrick.
So the question I have to ask myself is this:
So what's the problem? Well while the php works fine, there is the problem that it's not as polished as I would like it to be. This last part can be what's on for the next stage of development as we get closer to a wordpress 1.3 release. More questions will be asked about the template system and so it will get more clear to me what is required and what is not. Please bear in mind that until 6 months ago I'd never really dealt with php, so I think I'll need some more time to get my head around it all. It's damn powerful stuff, and I wish I understood it more but hey I'm going on small overload here, which is why I had asked Root to help me out originally.
Which brings me back to Alphaoide (see told you I'd get back to him). Behind the scenes the man has been an absolute gem. He's been answering all my dumbass questions and solving all the problems that I've had, which has prompted me to ask him if he'd be interested in joining me on my next project. I've also asked Chris Davis to join in on this little project as well, which he seems keen on just seems the man's been pretty busy lately, but I'm hoping he'll join in as well because I think he'd be great to have on the team.
So what is it I'm talking about you ask? The tentative title of the project (and most of you know that I'm pretty bad when coming up with names), is Shuttle. What is Shuttle? Simply, it's going to be a brand new spanking interface for the Wordpress Admin Control Panel. I'm sorry Matt, I love you, but the Wordpress interface is something to me that is sorely lacking in style and sometimes functionality. I don't think there are that many people (except if they're serious coders and really don't care what it looks like) that really love the aesthetics of the Wordpress Control Panel.
I'm going to admit something, and that's the fact that I nearly didn't go for Wordpress over Textpattern due to the weak interface. What can I say I'm a shallow designer, who places a lot on the actual appearance. What actually kept me was the fact that the Wordpress community was absolutely buzzing. I just had one look at the boards, and knew that if there was a question I needed it would be answered, and that was reassuring, however I've never liked the Control Panel, and well I don't think it's really on Ryan's or Matt's minds right now, so it's up to the rest of the community to sort it out. That's where the Shuttle Team come into play.
What's the ETA on this? Don't ask silly questions, you won't get silly answers. To be fair I think it will be at least 2 months down the line, hopefully less, but I'm being realistic about all of this. So why mention all of this now you ask? Well as this is something that is effectively user based I'd really like to hear which plugins, functions whatever you use, used to use or whatever from other blogging systems (just name them) or whatever that you think would be perfectly suited to the admin panel. I've created a new section on the boards for this so if anyone has any ideas/thoughts about it please just drop in and give your thoughts.
I'm going to do a little bit of Manji work, and decide tomorrow whether to release it or not. Also Manji has been downloaded over 500 times since it went live 12 days ago. Again thanks to everyone for their interest and support.
Great idea, best of luck. I left Wordpress for Textpattern - and had it been a little more polished, and a little more developed - I would have stayed. In the end, I also came back to Wordpress for the community. I think there are many others who waver due to the interface - I'm looking forward to what the three of you cook up.
Sounds like a great idea Khaled.
I have been looking into making some changes in my own admin interface, and as I recently had to hack to death an admin panel so that children could use it in a school setting, I fully agree with you that it is an area that needs a load of flexibility added.
It is almost depressing when you jump from such an excellent design as Manji and go in the back door to the standard admin panel. I think it stifles creativity.
I will be very intreseted to see what you guys come up with....
And thanks again for working so hard at all of this :)
Thanks guys, I guess in our own little way we're trying to do what KDE did to the Linux interface and created something that people could be happy using. Hell I love the icons and interface so much I've even ported it over to my windows platform.
I think it's time Wordpress moved away from it's B2 roots and found it's own voice completely and utterly, because as can be seen from other B2 derivatives, like B2Evolution there are several similarities ;)
very excited to hear about plans for the admin panel. I actually dont mind it at present, but then this is the first system i've tried, and i'm not a designer! :P
I can't believe it's only 12 days since the release of Manji! Personally i'm frothing at the mouth waiting for updates! Won't it always be in flux until the final code for 1.3 is released? Thanks for all your hard work. It's truly appreciated.
The code is pretty polished to be honest. We've literally got the code for the about page to sort out and Manji v1 can go out. II'll also be releasing another Flavour as well to help people along who want a more dark theme, and then prepping up the release for the final veraion of this here site :).
The code won't be changing much unless more stuff gets added to the theme system but I doubt it.
once again a big thankyou needs to go out for you continued work with wordpress
Drupal Themes
These are the themes I have made available for Drupal. When I first learn to use Drupal, I worked mostly with its default xtemplate system. But I have found the PHPTemplate theme engine to be more flexible, and these themes ar
Theming Zombie (Manji for Drupal)
As I said in my previous post, I am quite seriously down with stomach ulcer right now. Yesterday I couldn’t even sit up straight in front of the computer. And while that is possible today, I haven’t gain enough strength to actually leave my
Sorry for the multiple trackback, I can't find a way to turn off trackback autodiscovery on my site, and this sometimes happen. (It didn't even tracked the correct post :( )
I was going to let you know about the port once it is available to download, but I guess the plan is kind of ruined. I tried to be faithful to the design as much as possible, given the restriction of the different platform (Drupal). I hope you don't mind this port. :)
Chris I thank you and what an amazing surprise. I'm extremely flattered that you'd port it over. I'll be sure to make it nice and clear on the manji page :). I'm actually in the process of coming up with the new BK skin and I've got something cool in store for the Manji page, which will hopefully include the logos of the various systems (I do like Drupal's logo). How is it as a system?
Glad you like it :) Comparing to WP, Drupal has more content management features like better static page support and asset management, but less refined nieceties comparing to what WP and plugins offer. It used to be big for community websites, and only become known for blogs this year.
I look forward to cool stuffs on BK, after your nice holidy of course. :) Merry Christmas.
ity aspect of it, make it slightly more fun and attractive to use. This is taken from the post I announced this idea, I’m reproducing the relavant parts: So what is it I’m ta [...]
Shuttle Project Plans New Interface for WordPress
A team of designers and coders has come together in a grass-roots effort to build a better interface for WordPress......
[...] The idea of redesigning the WordPress administration panel began believe it or not in December 2004. For over a year and a half myself, Michael Heilemann, Joen Asmussen, Chris J Davis, Joshua Sigar (later joined by Bryan Veloso) exchanged countless emails and mockups and links and ideas regarding what we thought the WordPress administration panel should be. The project was called the Shuttle Project. I now have the pleasure of presenting what we came up with and explaining the future of the project. The Shuttle project was without a doubt the single hardest thing I’ve ever been involved with. The only thing that made it easy for me was the fine and exceptional gentlemen on the Shuttle team itself. What made it so difficult is the fact that we were thinking of the thousands of WordPress users all over the world. We were thinking of usability, we were thinking of asthetics, we were thinking of the power user and the novice user. How do you get three headstrong (and passionate) designers to play nice with each other? I swear I have no idea but somehow it all actually worked out in the end. I owe Michael and Joen a great deal of thanks for helping me improve how I think about design. [...]
[...] Developers from Broken Kode have released screenshots from this project here. I think this project have very big potential and we will have one big fight between Tiger Admin Panel and Shuttle. The idea of redesigning the WordPress administration panel began believe it or not in December 2004. For over a year and a half myself, Michael Heilemann, Joen Asmussen, Chris J Davis, Joshua Sigar (later joined by Bryan Veloso) exchanged countless emails and mockups and links and ideas regarding what we thought the WordPress administration panel should be. The project was called the Shuttle Project. I now have the pleasure of presenting what we came up with and explaining the future of the project. [...]