Two months ago I got a Nokia N73 hand-me-down from Roland thanks to Nokia's Blogger Relations Program. It's a 'smart phone' with a large 320x240 screen, a 3 megapixel camera and more. Before this, I'd been using an old Nokia 3310 brick (monochrome screen) so this was quite a step up. Still, I wasn't particularly unhappy with my old phone because all I really needed was voice calls and SMS. So I was curious myself to see if I'd actually use all the bells and whistles.
One of the things I worked on for Drupal 5 was to make Drupal smarter about itself. For example, the new status report tells you about security or maintenance problems, and can alert you if you need to run update.php after updating a module. These warnings are also pushed out to the main administration page.
This is a significant improvement in usability, as we try to make site set up and maintenance as painless as possible. The user can focus on the things they care about. If there is something that needs the admin's attention, it is clearly indicated.
The inspiration for this came from OS X. There are some really great examples of this in both Apple and third-party applications.
Updated video: now also highlights deep links (though gray, not white), bubbles are prettier and aligned better and video capture is smoother. I also changed the music to please termie.
Out of a whacky conversation on IRC comes the latest treat for Drupal 5.0.
The new administration section is nice, but it's a big adjustment for 4.7 users. It's not immediately obvious where to go to find a certain option. Wouldn't it be handy if you could find any administration page with a couple of keystrokes? Something like Apple Spotlight?
Today's usability special: a nice slice of jQuery with some search module on the side, sprinkled with menu magic and topped off with some sexy CSS. Feast your eyes on this:
Patch is available on drupal.org.
