The Addictive Future 12
The future of Addictions is something I’ve been meaning to talk about for a few days now. There have been many feature requests (by email, IM, and comments on the two posts, and I’d like to thank those who took the time to make such requests), all of which have been generally accepted as additions to Addictions 2.0 (yes, I’m jumping to 2.0 rather than 1.5 or some other BS versioning convention).
Addictions’ original intent, though probably not made as clear as I could have made it, was to provide a way to show the readers of a blog the author’s (intentionally singular, I’ll explain in a moment) current interest in fields of entertainment — those being games, books, movies, and music. Addictions 1.0 (which I’m bumping 1.0-RC2 to) fulfilled this intent with ease, and then some. However, the people request more, and I’m curious to see where this goes, so I’m going to continue building on to it until it becomes unnecessary or futile.
Some things you’ll see in Addictions 2.0 will include:
- Archiving of past Addictions;
- The ability to have multiple Addictions in one field of entertainment (for example, your top 5 books);
- A more uniform way of placing images (especially useful for people who use theme switchers); and
- Interaction with Amazon’s Web Service, so the user doesn’t have to manually input links
Now earlier, I said that the original intent of Addictions was for a singular author blog. At the time, I did not anticipate the use of Addictions in a blog where there are multiple authors, simply because I normally work in a single-user system, and therefore think in those terms. However, following a user’s request for such, I have decided to separately launch work on Addictions MA 1.0. Addictions MA will have the same codebase as Addictions 2.0 (though it may have limited support for some features), but will be more geared towards multi-author systems in features and will be easily labeled as to whose addictions are whose.
Features for Addictions MA will include the codebase and features of Addictions 2.0 (but with some limiting of the multiple addictions feature) while offering individualized addictions and distinct labelling of them, using what is now subtitles in Addictions 1.0.
So, that’s the Addictive future, as I see it. This should all take a few weeks, so keep watch here, it’ll be here before you know it. I’m extremely excited about this, not only because it’s going to test my PHP knowledge, but also because of the great features we’ll be able to enjoy from this update.
The Bubbling and Knocking 3
I feel the itch, the want. It’s building in me again… Again! It’s bubbling and knocking and clawing, trying to get out. That crazy desire, that locked up inner-geek and pent up inner-designer intertwined into one trying to break free once more…
Or maybe I’m just hungry?
Wordpress.com Review 6
So, I recently got my grubby, butter-fingered hands on a Wordpress.com invite, and thought I’d do a review on it (aren’t I spiffy? YESH! YESH I AM! >_<!). For those who don’t know, the best way I can explain Wordpress.com is that it is like Wordpress’ TypePad. I’m also assuming (based on what I’ve been told by others and a posts on Matt Mullenweg’s Wordpress.com site). And with that said, I want to stop gibbering and get on with it ;D .
After logging on, you’re greeted with the new-and-improved admin interface and Dashboard
As you can see, this dashboard is not like the WP 1.5x Dash you normally see. You see in this new dash a design overhaul (much better than the current grayscale-esque styling), and a quick list of links of common points of interest for users. You also have your normal “Recent Posts” and “Recent Comments” listing on the right. It then goes on to list the fastest growing blogs on Wordpress.com, as well as top blogs and the top posts of the day, and the most recent posts on Wordpress.com. Also, replacing the “Get Firefox” button at the bottom is a BrowseHappy button, now that Wordpress has obtained BrowseHappy from WaSP.
After the initial awe and glory of the dashboard fades, you begin to glance around, and wonder at that little feedback tab in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, labelled “Feedback.” So, you shove your mouse into the corner, and click…
…and dear sweet goodness, it’s AJAX sexiness. Now while this “Feedback” feature is obviously meant for beta testing purposes within Wordpress.com, it shows what’s to come once you dig more in-depth, and just how powerful Wordpress is becoming.
Moving on from the Dashboard, we go to the Write tab, which has gotten an overhaul of its own.
The first thing that grabs your attention is absolutely the WYSIWYG editor (turned on by default, but the ability to turn it off is in the Options panel). I am not a fan of WYSIWYG editors, myself, but I must say that this built-in one is quite nice (it has an undo!) — though that may just be the WP fanboy part of me speaking. The really exciting parts (to me), though, are to the right and bottom of the text area.
As seen above, stuff like categories, post password, excerpt, custom fields, trackbacks— they’re all “widgets” (again, AJAX goodness). You can open and close them at your pleasure, drag them into any order you want, and you can create categories on the fly. This eliminates clutter, while being on the bleeding edge and just schweet at the same time. You can also expand and contract the text area by dragging the corner of it up and down, which is neat if you like having a bigger or smaller text area to type in when making entries.
The Manage tab remains largely the same as the current version of Wordpress. However, you will find some differences, such as the fade effect I tried to capture above. Whenever you, say, delete a post, you click “Delete,” then “Ok,” and the post being deleted instantly flares to red than fades to non-existance. It’s quite nice. You also get this effect when you update any of your Options, but rather the “Options saved” box comes up and fades from yellow to it’s normal gray.
Another difference under the Manage tab is the “Referers” sub-menu. It spits out stats, but I’m not going to provide a screenshot because it’s still a bit rough around the edges. It, however, is a welcome addition where stats have been noticably absent, atleast to me.
The Presentation tab, however, has changed quite a bit, even if dumbed down a bit for mass-use in Wordpress.com.
As you can see, the theme’s details is shown side-by-side with a screenshot. This is incredibly helpful for anyone that has a hard time remembering what a certain theme looks like that they have loaded, as well as being just visually nicer than the current Presentation tab in 1.5.2.
I think this preview of WP1.6 (or, some speculate, 2.0) is incredibly nice so far. Don’t get me wrong, however, it’s still a bit rough around the edges, especially some of the newer features, and I still think the organization and looks of the admin. interface could be improved quite a bit. However, judging by the current state of what I just went over, Wordpress is poised to be the best in the market, by far.
But that’s just my 2 cents.
