Posts filed under "habari"
So now that the plugins are working on the site, I’ve been able to get the archives plugin working, in the new Archives page. Still needs a lot of work to unify that look, but it’s nice to see all my posts over the years in one place. Definitely a slow down in the last year or so.
Well I just upgraded to the latest Habari developer preview release. This thing has been a long time coming. I’ve not played around with it too much, but it does feel much snappier. Upgrading has been a pretty damn easy process, and the way I’ve set it up, all future upgrades will be just as easy as well - using SSH.
I’m going to be posting a whole bunch of stuff about this, because I really think it’s good for people that are complete n00bs (like myself) to get stuck into this, as it’ll make the general process so much less time consuming.
It’s been 6 months since I started my sabbatical on 23rd of October 2009. Without a doubt this single best decision I’ve ever taken in my life was to press pause, take a step back and review where I was and where I wanted to be.
The plan for the sabbatical was actually very fluid. When I was asked what I wanted to do with the time off, my general response was that I wanted to take some time to calm down, work on my graphic novel and see the family. That was actually all true. Most of my family questioned my decision to start work on my graphic novel in Saida, Lebanon. I’ve lived all my life in a major city, Athens & London. Saida is anything but a major city. It’s a village. Made of concrete. With little in the way of excitement. What the hell was I doing?
I was taking the time to sit at my desk, do some drawing, live in my own apartment, look at the Mediterranean every morning, run on the beach, avoid public transport, see the family, eat some good food, discover a whole new city. I was changing my routine. How long was I going to last? I wasn’t sure. What was interesting to me is that every month I kept extending my stay, against all odd. What can I say, the place has an irresistible charm. Other elements in my life also started happening (but I’m not ready to share those just yet, but needless to say I’m very happy with the way things are going on that front).
So I decided to look at the option for staying here would be. Could I find a job here? The truth is I did the interview rounds in March and April of this year. It was an amazing period for me, only because I’ve NEVER done a real interview apart from the one I took when I was trying to get into Arup. The difference of course is that i was in a unique position. I wasn’t looking to leave Arup because I didn’t like the place. The places i was going to interview had to basically CONVINCE me that I wanted to join them. I wasn’t looking for a way out of Arup. I was looking for a way into Lebanon. The thing was I wasn’t willing to compromise.
Finally after several interviews and even spending an entire week in the office, I’ve decided to take a position at Pierre Dammous and Partners. It’s a small practice and feels more like a family than anything else. The great thing about it all is of course that I have a great opportunity to actually start building something around me. It’s interesting in contrast I suppose to Arup where things take a bit of time and have to go through a greater hierarchy (the nature of a large organisation no doubt - although it does it much better than others).
So in a nutshell, I’m moving to Lebanon, having never spent more than a month, I’m now poised to stay here for the next few years at least. It’s a massive transition for me which bring a great deal of opportunity for me.
So what did I actually achieve during this period off? I gained a great deal, no doubt, but what did I actually CREATE? Well most of these are documented in a fashion on this site. For my own benefit I’ll list them here.
Aitus Moralis - This was my focus until the end of March. I would work on it for at least 6-8 hours a day. It wasn’t as intense as I would have liked it to be, but I was learning how to do this. The final outcome is the first draft of the entire graphic novel, character descriptions and environment descriptions. I’ve also begun design many of the characters (of which there are over 50 in this the first of the series.
Logos - I finished off a couple of logos in the time off. These were mainly side projects that I wanted to do. I did a Habari logo (which obviously wasn’t adopted, but was fun to make). I did a ViaSound logo for my friend Yanni (not sure if he’s using it). I finished a Vivid Creations logo for my cousin Yahya (who I know is using it, and has used it in a great way).
POP4 - I completed several pages of this little idea of a comic. It’s still on the cards to continue, however the truth is I need to get into a rythm, with work and life in general, which I don’t have. The concept is simple, split an A4 piece of paper into 4 vertical panels. Spend 1hour a day on each panel. Don’t think about it before hand, don’t think about it after it’s done. The whole point is to get some art done, in an hour. I stopped the routine as I was working on Aitus Moralis, but I will be getting into this hopefully once i get back to Lebanon and start work again.
Broken Kode - I completed this design that you are looking at right now. The thing about this design is that it’s actually pretty solid (in my mind at least). So much so that every time I go to mess about with it, i end up going back to this single column, completely minimalist design. One of the great parts of this design is that I have been concentrating on the content itself and created a framework for myself to actually bring the content to the front. The illustrations page is one i am very fond of.
Family Portrait - This was a really fun side project. With the house being renovated in Lebanon, there was an empty door which we decided to try and do something about. The solution was to have a stained glass portrait of the family. It took me something like 3 months to finally get the drawing done (after many failed attempts) but the final outcome is unique.
Artwork - I did a decent amount of artwork at the start of the sabbatical, which ultimately I won’t be able to use (maybe in the making of companion book to Aitus Moralis). However one of the greatest aspects of this sabbatical is that I FINALLY achieved my own style. No more am I a bad copy of such and such artist. You can see influences sure, but I strive for my own path now, which has been a long time coming. My main weakness at the moment is facial expressions so I’ll be doing a lot of drills in the coming year to sort this out, because it’s a terrible weakness which I have to resolve.
There is soo much to talk about, and even more to show. The coming year I will be beaming the ‘Kode from it’s second spiritual home. It will no longer be out of London as it has been since it’s start, but rather from Beirut.
So Owen’s responded to a few things that I’d written. I knew it was coming, and I knew it would be a big one, so true to form the man’s gotten back to me.
To be clear, although I didn’t voice it at the time, one of the reasons why I actually decided to move over to WordPress a while back was in fact when it transpired that Owen might leave the project (I don’t know the exact details, but it seems a community member was maybe hurting more than helping). In any case, Habari without Owen is a much poorer place. Not to take anything away from others who tirelessly contributed to the code, but he’s amassed probably three times as much commits as the next guy (roughly speaking) and generally leads the way - so I listen when he’s got something to say because I respect him enough because he spends the time to explain himself properly. Forget the fact that we don’t agree on everything, I think it’s clear we both want the software to move in the right direction.
The Problem
He raises some decent points which i’d like to consider a bit in analysing how to move forward.
I would love to replace the logo with something better. But something decidedly, unarguably better.
That’s the biggest problem. Who’s deciding which is unarguably better. I can argue that the question mark is brilliant and the non-descript H is rubbish till the cows come in, as I’m sure others can argue the direct opposite. The point is, it’s your opinion against someone elses. The frame work is not there for moving it forward either. We’re not going to strike lightning in a bottle, nor do I think that I can make something that is universally liked by everyone. Fuck me, that’s pretty much impossible to do. For everyone that thinks the Nike swoosh is an icon, you’ve got others proclaiming that it’s completely pointless.
The point is taking where we currently are and moving forward. Otherwise we end up hurting things more and ultimately not achieving anything.
The way forward
My suggestion? Elect a sub-group of people to huddle somewhere, create a plan, build something usable in a staging place, and then report back to the community for review. They take comments, re-huddle, and iterate until either everyone loves it, or there’s no budging by one side or another. And at that point, the community defaults and uses what they’ve built.
I’ve created my logo. So if anything, I’m happy if I was the one making the decisions. My thought process is clear to me. The logo is out there for anyone to pick at as they please. I had an idea, I put it forward. It didn’t take me too long, hell writing up the previous 5 Habari posts probably took me longer to be honest. Like I said, if anything, I’ve got a nice t-shirt design.
I’m not adverse to exploring the issue further with a task force, hell I think it’s a great idea but ultimately I want to know that our work will be accepted, or voted upon. I want to know the structure, because the exercise will take more time out of me and honestly I don’t want to waste my time - which I’m sure you can appreciate.
The taskforce
Obviously everyone is welcome to contribute to the taskforce. If you have a thought or an idea, draw it and throw into the pot. We’ll discuss it find reasons for and against. Some might come up with one idea, that another person will run with which will be then built upon by another. Another might be inspired to go in a different direction. The ultimate idea is that at the end, hopefully there will be something tangible that this taskforce has produced.
The next question that should be raised is, does that then get used instantly? According to Owen, that shouldn’t be the case. It should be reviewed by the rest of the community, lather rinse repeat. This can work, after a fashion. I propose that this is done in a finite number of stages. When we design a building (I’m a building services engineer), the design process is broken down into 4 distinct stages (at least from an engineering POV). Concept, Scheme, Tender, Construction. In a similar fashion, we can also break it down into a few stages.
Concept - Ideas about what it could be are thrown on the table. The question mark, the capital H, the doorbell etc. At this stage it is important NOT to rubbish any ideas. This is to create as many ideas as is possible. No idea is off limits.
Scheme - The ideas with more legs are weeded out. This is going to be time consuming, because ultimately it is important to come up with one or two ideas options which can be further pursued. The point here is reduce the number of options to a manageable few that can be detailed further.
Tender - The few options that are thought to be in contention are whittled down to one. Maybe the execution isn’t perfect but ultimately it’s an idea that everyone is behind. The general thought process is there.
Construction - We build the logo based on the finally selected option. The detail is put in here, and the various elements are presented to be used. In the software, on the website, as badges etc. Used in ‘press’ releases. Whatever.
We report back at every stage. Any thoughts are processed then and then we move on. The other thing that is important is to have a proper timeline for all of this. Otherwise it’ll meander endlessly. Therefore I propose 1 month for each stage. Gives people enough time to consider, think about things, review, reflect, write emails/responses/posts if they have an issues concerns ideas.
We don’t jump back several stages. The rest of the community had the opportunity to review and present their ideas in the given timeframe. Inaction is not allowing progress which as I’ve explained has a negative affect on the software base itself.
If anything it’ll be an interesting exercise to see if design by commitee works on the internet and in an open source project. Afterall, how do you think all those buildings that you live and work in were designed? By the choices of one person? Don’t be silly.
I get the feeling that when you’re done tearing the thing down, assuming you have any energy left afterwards, you might actually do something. Am I right?
I hope so. Like I said, it’s not because I think this will raise my profile, or because I want to have the Habari logo as a notch in my design portfolio (I don’t even have one, although I keep meaning to create one). This is all being done to ensure the progression and future of the software (selfishly because I enjoy using it). I’m not going to let a few with myopic vision hinder PROGRESS dammit :).
So it seems I might have come across as being negative and I guess some have seen my last few posts as diatribes.
Just to be clear on something I’m genuinely not trying to be rude, I’m trying to build awareness because I can see a problem that I think will ultimately have an effect on the software and the developers themselves; which obviously I don’t want, because I enjoying using this software immensely and I want it to succeed. I don’t gain anything personally from doing this, except the satisfaction of giving something back.
I think the general consensus in Habariland is split with regards to my logo proposal:
Those who think the current logo is good and we don’t need something new.
and those who like the ‘idea’ of the question mark, just not the current execution of the one I’ve presented.
Honestly, I can live with that; actually this can be considered as progress. Would it be useful to have a look at drawing a couple of other question marks? Would that be a rewarding or ultimately futile effort/exercise? Should i just carry on with the next task I’ve been working on (namely the website)? Would it actually be something to present for a vote by the community? Is there any point?
I ask only because I obviously want things to move in a positive direction to make the software better and to make the experience of using the software better.
You want to build a website? Go ahead. Any monkey with a computer connected to the internet and notepad can create a website. Everything else is a matter of scale.
Yesterday I had a conversation on IRC, which ultimately went nowhere (as a lot of these conversations have done in the past over there), so I thought I’d explain the reason for revisiting the branding, website, documentation aspects of the Habari project and why I feel that ultimately it’s hurting the development of the software.
Design
Although much of design is thought of as subjective, obviously it’s not all subjective. There are rules that you can abide by, or completely ignore. The thing is, unlike code, if you don’t design it ‘correctly’ it’s not going break and give you back an error. The error isn’t immediate rather it is one the appears over the long term. What it will do is fragment your target audience, or detract them from coming back, or sticking around long enough to see if you’re worth the effort.
Habari has been going on for nearly 3 years now and while it seemed ok in the first few years for the software to have a less than adequate branding, right now I think it’s hurting the exposure of the software to invite new people. Maybe I’m wrong, but from looking around in the community areas, forum, IRC and mailing list and how active those are, as opposed to how active they could be, I don’t think I’m far off.
The issue here is that critical mass hasn’t happened, nor is a uniform infrastructure in place to allow it to flourish. And while some might think that these things aren’t important, I beg to differ. If you’re happy with the software doing what it does right now, and don’t want it to improve, then fine, there’s version 0.63 blog off; those that want to enhance the software and the blogging experiences of Habari, read on.
Free
The problem you see is that there are quite a few different solutions out there for anyone to use. These alternative solutions are all free, they’re generally pretty mature in features, have decent documentation, and have a community (with varying degrees of success).
It’s not like going Habari, means you get a cheaper product. You get other things with Habari, which unfortunately have not been flaunted properly, because well, they haven’t been flaunted at all. Again the devil is in the detail.
New Blood
So what’s the problem you ask? Well, the real problem here is that by not attracting a larger user base, you’re also detracting from new blood coming into the doors. This then reduces the amount of developers available to submit patches, to create plugins, to create themes, to push the general boundaries of the software. It’s left on the shoulders of an able few, and so the software takes more and more time to move forward, often putting more undue strain on the existing developers, which ultimately isn’t healthy for the general future of the software.
Solution
And you’re solution is what? A new logo?
It’s the start of the solution. The actual solution requires attack from several different directions. The things that I think need to be considered are:
Branding
Website
Documentation
1. Branding
Branding can be used to provide awareness back to the software. There are enough different solutions out there, which means Habari needs to distinguish itself somehow. Having a beautiful logo will entice people to put it onto their sites as a badge of pride and thus provide more widespread awareness back to the software. This of course brings up the whole subjective nature of what makes a beautiful logo. A good logo is memorable and should reflect the values/ideology of that which it is representing. It doesn’t need to SHOUT it’s raison d’etre. I’ve done my part with regards to this so I’ll move on.
Branding isn’t only a logo. Thankfully the admin panel and the code itself has already defined these aspects. Elegance. Simplicity. Modern. Black. Grey. Inventive. ‘Out of the way’. All words to help better define the Habari branding. All elements which should be extended to the rest of the Habari presence online.
2. Website
Which brings us to the website. This is both our best and worst tool at the moment. When someone types in Habari in google or clicks on any one of the plethora of CMS demo sites, they are taken to the habariproject.org website. That is their first habari experience (after the name).
While you can’t be something to everyone, the website should at the very least try and address the various userbases: hobbyist, developer, designer.
The real shame of it (which is why I’m writing this) is that the site, does the software base a HUGE disfavour. The software and admin is better than that. It deserves better than that. Many times depending on how professionally put together a website appears it will attract or drive away potential users.
At the moment the page doesn’t do a good job of conveying what makes Habari special and better than the other solutions. It doesn’t distinguish itself.
3. Documentation
The importance of this cannot be overstated. The problem is, you need a larger user base in order to tackle this. The current documentation is written for developers. The complete novice, or neophyte like myself won’t be able to understand what’s going on most of the time. There is a way to writing good documentation and we need to address this as well. I have a few ideas with regards to this as well (I’ve done this within the company I work for).
Remaining Questions
How do we entice the young aspiring developers looking to gain some experience to come to us? How do we get the developer who is more familiar with WordPress or Textpattern? How do you get the web designer, who wants a more elegant solution (there’s that word again)? While some of these questions are somewhat answered by the current website, again I feel they’re not presented in the correct manner, but that’s the next post.
I don’t have the power to enforce said changes, so I’ll talk and present my ideas on this site; if they’re employed, then that’s fantastic; but in a year’s time when we’re looking at the same general user base (having not gained much further traction) then maybe some of this will become more important. If not I’d happily eat some claim chowder.
So now that we’ve got ourselves a kick ass logo, now would be a good time to make some badges so that everyone can put them on their websites and you know, spread the word.
In this set you’ll also find a few with Habari written in them.
See how that logo gets integrated? The font used is Gill Sans, which is one of my favourite fonts - you can see it in use on this site. The reason I think it works here is because it’s rounded so it retains an element associated with the logo (the playful nature of the logo), and yet bold and modern (like the software). The package contains:
Logo
PNG - Light grey on white background
PNG - Dark grey on light grey background
PNG - White on dark grey background
EPS - Vector for you to customise as you wish
Logo with Habari
These come in two sizes, 460px and 180px widths.
PNG - Dark grey on light grey background
PNG - Light grey on dark grey background
PNG - White on dark grey background
PNG - White on light grey background
These will also find a permenant home at www.brokenkode.com/habari .
You don’t need a designer. You need a marketeer.
That’s what my brother said to Yanni last week sometime when we were discussing his online radio station as he was lamenting that not many people were listening to his station. That got me thinking about Habari. It’s been going on for a while now, and yet I don’t feel like the software has hit a critical mass, which is a shame. I think there are several reasons for this, but I’ll start with the first part in trying to help the guys and gals move forward.
Branding
I’m not actually surprised that a proper branding and logo were not agreed on, past the h-dumbell thing. Yes, you can kind of see the H in there, and if you really really try (after someone points it out to you) you might see a bell in there as well, but what that doesn’t have much if anything to do with the software, what it does or what it is?
To be completely blunt, from an aesthetic POV it’s not terribly elegant and doesn’t really convey anything about the actual software, the community, etc. That eyesore has to be sorted out for the good of the software (I’ll be going into this in more detail in a future post). Rather than just bitch and moan about something, and not actually do anything about it, I thought I’d take up the challenge. The thing is I did attempt to do this 3 years ago, and I came up with this lovely collection:
Yeah, shut up. I can actually see my thought process, but I guess at the time I was more interested in making something that appealed to the people that had originally started the work (the original Cabal). Thankfully, now I’m just out to make a good logo, that people can use in a plethora of applications, is memorable as the Habari software and is nice enough for me to want to include said mark on my website as well.
Obviously the logo should reflect the software itself, which I have repeatedly been calling it elegant, both in code and in design.
The Question
So I sat down at my desk last night, thinking I’ll spend a couple of hours on this tops, and I wrote down:
Habari
What’s the news?
Then I paused. Why the hell didn’t I think of this before? Habari may by definition be a noun, but it’s also a question. What’s the news? Habari is also the answer, a method to provide the news online. The simplest answers are sometimes staring you in the face. The logo should be the question mark. For some reason I instantly knew how that question mark was to look like, at least in my head, but first I thought I’d try seeing what it looks like with some typical typefaces, Helvetica, Gill Sans etc. This is what it looked like:
Convinced that the actual idea had legs and the more I thought about it the more I was convinced that this as an idea is a good one I started sketching. The thing is I didn’t need to sketch for long, because like I said the second I had the idea, the logo was fully formed in my mind. There would be no harsh lines. The reason for this is because that’s not what Habari is about. It’s about elegance, not sharpness. It does things slightly differently than other to smooth your general experience (this is evident from the installer through to the admin panel and beyond).
So here’s my proposal for the new Habari logo:
I’ve also included this set of iterations, which show the logo in both dark and in light colours, on white and on dark backgrounds. The logo remains distinct in all these incarnations.
This next set shows the logo at different sizes: 100px, 75px, 50px, 25px and 16px - click here for the full size of the image.
There have been other attempts at looking at this in the past, all of which have failed, so I don’t think that this time is going to be any different, because it’s a very touchy subject (which is why it’s not moved forward in 3 years). I don’t really expect anything from this exercise to be honest, except that I for one want to at least know that I tried to help in this regard and gave a viable (and hopefully useful) alternative.
And if anything, it would make an awesome t-shirt as well:
For those who know me from my professional life (I’m a Chartered Engineer), know what a complete filing freak I am. All graduates that have helped me out, or that I’ve had anything to do with their training have gone through an induction with regards to how to file things properly. It’s a MASSIVE bug bear with me.
When I had that moment of madness and I moved over to WordPress, what struck me was that Habari’s elegance doesn’t extend to just the admin panel. In Habari it extends to the filing structure, which I really want to shine a bit of a spotlight on, only because I think it’s not generally discussed and I think that the developers deserve mad props for building this elegance in.
When you download a copy of Habari and you open your folder, you’re presented with the following files and folders:
Let’s compare some of the other people:
WordPress
Textpattern
Chyrp
There are a couple of things to take from the above. The first is the number of files without folders. In Habari, this is a total of 3, in WordPress it’s 23, in Textpattern it’s 4, while in Chyrp it’s 5.
The second thing to pay close attention to is the names chosen for these folders. I know which I feel is the clearest filing structure of those above.
Lets turn our attention to the main menu in Habari. As I mentioned before there has to be a better way than the current method. The reasoning for the current menu is simple, once you start adding all the menu items (including those provided by the various plugin) the list becoming very long indeed. Without any plugin menus this is what is currently there (including one of the expanded menu version):
And here’s that menu with one of the side menus popping out:
From my personal use, I only need 8 menu items in total:
New Entry
New Page
Manage
Comments
Dashboard
Plugins
Options
Logout
For me everything else is completely superflous, or at least it’s bloody rare for me to even go there, like once a year if that (I don’t think I’ve ever gone to the logs and groups menu for example). As I said that’s only because of the way I choose to use Habari. Other users might feel like they want something a bit different, and this type of functionality would allow
Proposal
The Menu plugin would allow you (in the options page) to hide all the menu items, spare the Dashboard, Options and Logout menu items (for obvious reasons). From then on, it’s open season for you to configure your drop down menu as you wish. This would reduce the need for side menus to pop out. It would also empower the user to customise the menu which would in turn hopefully streamline the workflow, your route from A to B.
The other aspect of this Menu plugin that would also hopefully enhance the experience, would be bringing the shortcut numbers back. In the options menu we would also provide an option to assign the menu option with a keyboard shortcut to a menu item. This way we’d get back to a more streamlined workflow, which is slightly hindered by an additional keyboard stroke (at least in my eyes it is).
Future Details
While talking with Michael on #irc about the above, one of the things that he brought forward is maybe having an option to expand all the menu items by double clicking ‘Q’ or something like that, which I think is an excellent idea. Also in the options menu apart from just a quick tickbox to see whether or not you want the menu item to be shown or not we might also be able to provide the option to rearrange the menu itself, thus providing further customisation, enhancing elegance.
One of my absolute favourite plugins on Habari is the Publish Quote plugin written by Michael. The plugin has done well by me for like over a year, but in my mind there is some room for slight improvement in the way it operates. Habari does a great job of staying out of your way (as I found out the hard way) and I feel that this plugin is really a direct extension of that, which will make it even easier for you to actually publish your thoughts quicker and faster, ultimately making you blog more.
Currently the plugin works by taking you back to main admin panel with all the various fields filled in (according to your option preferences). There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this approach. As long as you’re logged in, you have no problems (and seeing as I use the persistence of memory plugin my Scott, I’m ok on that front as well).
Proposal
My absolute favourite bookmarklet of all time has got to be the one used by Asaph. I’ve been using that particular software since it came out and it’s done extremely well for me, even thought it’s never been updated since it’s release (save for a minor point release).
The ‘new’ Publish quote plugin would operate in a similar fashion. Clicking the bookmarklet would provide a drop down card which would sit above the page. The card would look like this:
Details
When you click on your bookmarklet, this card slides down to reveal three pertinent fields and the save and publish buttons. The design stylings are taken from the admin panel. The background is slightly transparent (not as much as the message logs in the admin, but enough for you to notice a difference).
The card has rounded corners (to be consistent with the admin panel) and also includes the slightly greyed rounded box in the top left hand corner around the title of the plugin (more on this below).
User Experience
In my mind, the nice thing about the way in which this proposed bookmarklet operates, is that your ‘workflow’ is improved. You don’t leave the site that you are appreciating (or not as the case may be) and wanting to write about. Your blogging experience is enhanced by not taking you away from your ‘target’. The software then stays out of your way and because of that hopefully entices you to use the software more, because it’s that easy.
After all the whole point of this is to communicate your thoughts and ideas as easily as possible in an enjoyable fashion.
Future Iterations
Looking to the future, while maintaining what makes this plugin elegant and useful is important. The ‘Quote’ text has the small greyed background (which follows the structure of the drop down menu in the main admin panel). The reason for this is to possibly allow some further functionality into the game. By choosing another option from this additional menu, you could choose to post an image from a website instead of a quote by choosing the image (in a similar way to how Asaph does this). Or simiarly you could choose a video etc. This is just one direction that this plugin could go.
In looking around the Habari admin panel I’ve got to thinking which areas are important to me in the way that I use the software and how to take care of those pesky little design issues which I see as glaring mistakes. These are the areas that I feel could use a little bit of design TLC, which basically will give the software that added bit of polish and maintain it’s elegance.
I’m currently in the process of learning PHP, so hopefully in a few month’s time I’ll have hopefully created the plugin to deal with these few issues. If they’re seen as a good idea, then maybe they can be included into the core, but I’m more interested in getting the software to do what I personally would like it to do, good ideas often times find their way back up the trunk. If someone wants to jump in now, I’m not going to stop you, and will gladly help where I can.
Dashboard
When you get into the Dashboard, you currently get a small paragraph above the rest of the cards. This paragraph has some information specifically relating to your site. The issue for me here is that it’s completely out of context with the rest of the admin panel, as it’s the only place where such text exists.
Solution: This information should be collected into another card that sits with the rest of the cards and can be moved around in the same fashion to suit the person’s preferences.
Drop Down Sub-Menu Items
The current implementation of the drop down menu is that a sub-menu item slides out from the side of the main item. This implementation was considered the best option due to the fact that as you add more and more plugins, their menus will increase the main menu greatly, making it too long.
Solution: I would go even more minimalist. As an everyday user, I don’t actually need to have most of these options available on my screen. I don’t need to have:
Logs
Theme
Users
Import
Groups
My Profile
Personally, the only secondary options that I would like to have are the Options and Plugins (secondary options being New, Manage, Comments and Tags). Other people might have a different approach, but again I would probably argue that every person has got options in that menu which they rarely use.
To that end, I would reinstate the original design of having a sub menu present inline of the main menu item. Within the ‘Option’ page there would be an additional section which would allow the end user to ‘hide’ some of the menu items. The only backend menu items that would be present as a default would be the Dashboard, Options and Logout. You would then reduce the length by 6 lines deep.
Earlier this month I moved this blog back over to WordPress in an act of madness. I hated it and did little blogging in that time. In considering why I hated the experience at WordPress so much, I came upon an interesting parallel. Habari is to WordPress what Apple is to Microsoft.
One of the things that can be said about Apple when compared to Microsoft is that Apple provides a more elegant computing experience that has been better thought out. In a similar fashion Habari is by far the more elegant product where the details have been sweated out and the experience has been better considered.
As a simple example when you install WP you get a random password in your email box and then the second you log into the panel you get a message asking you to change your password. Why didn’t you let me choose a password during the installation process?
Meanwhile on Habari, the installation is all done on the same page, you insert your preferred password right there.
As another example once you’ve logged into WordPress you’re bomobarded with this clusterfuck of items - TMI (too much information). Yes, i know you can remove most of that stuff (but this is all feeding into my analogy). These items aren’t necessary, they’re added first and you are asked to remove them. It’s like when you buy yourself a Dell PC and get a whole bunch of crapware installed on it, which you can remove (most of the time).
Habari doesn’t have that shit to begin with. These items have not been added from the outset. These things have been considered. And who else do we know that doesn’t like superflous stuff cluttering your view and generally getting in your way? These are just a couple of examples which I might expand upon, because the above is basically the tip of the iceberg.
These are subtle differences but important I think in the final assessment, afterall the devil is in the details.
After a moment of pure madness, I went back to WordPress, only to find that actually the creature comforts that I had become accustomed to in Habari were not present. It had such a detrimental effect on me that I could even post small links. The bookmarklets didn’t work, the thing felt heavy and I couldn’t wrap my head around the various elements of the code that had passed me by.
I’ll be writing more about Habari in the coming months as there definitely is a lot of work being done, but it just needs a bit of, consolidation of sorts.
If you’re reading this in your feed reader, then have a look at the site, which looks a little bit different, as I’ve also updated to version 9.
What’s the reason for going back to WordPress? Simply the plugins and documentation available to me to actually do what I need to get done. Yes I could called on the Habari community, but I just want to get on with things. Trying to write something like P2 for Habari is definitely out of my scope of knowledge. I’m not a developer. I’m not even a web designer. This is something of a hobby that I enjoy playing around with. But it should get in my way, and unfortunately due to my inadequacies as a developer Habari was getting in my way. I really really hope that in the future I’ll be able to make a proper and permenant jump over to Habari, but now is not the time (I did attempt it for a year, but my site looked more like it was created in 2006 rather than in 2009).
I am more than happy to play around with this and make it work for me, slowly moulding it and shaping it to what I want it to do, but writing this from scratch would be too much of a pain in my ass.
So here it is, comments are back online (for now) and I’m sure there is going to be a load more things to come in the not too distant future.
It’s been nearly 4 1/2 years since comments were officially not part of this site. Back then it was because I couldn’t actually host them on my own site, until of course I moved to WordPress and during the blogging revolution of the early naughties. So what’s changed? Twitter and Facebook. Both of which have brought the internet to the world that hid themselves from it, but they’ve practically killed the blogosphere, or at least how it used to operate.
The funny thing is turning them off was on the cards for a while now. I’ve noticed this downturn for about a year now (probably a few months before I even moved to Habari as my blogging engine of choice).
Does it upset me? I guess it’s a different kind of change. While sometimes I like twitter, there’s too much noise for me on there. Also the fact that everyone only speaks in soundbytes does annoy me. I can’t read people’s thoughts about things because they’re limited and effectively people’s voices on the internet are silenced.
In the meantime I’ll be here writing more than 140 characters and hopefully sharing some good links from around the net. If you want to comment on something, drop me an email or you know…send me reply on twitter (maybe I’ll even integrate that twitter reply thing that Michael is attempting at the moment).
TweetBacks - Great little plugin for WordPress (that will hopefully be making it’s way over to Habari) that bring Tweetbacks. Think of them as trackbacks only made of tweets.
Today I was reminded that you cannot force design. You cannot force creativity. While thinking of something else the inspiration will strike. From my point of view, whenever I create anything I can actually see the final product in my mind. Sometimes depending on whatever it is that I am doing I will see this picture clearly and I have the necessary tools and skills to achieve that vision, othertimes I can see only my shortcomings…this is probably the norm to be honest.
The site’s design has been building slowly, organically as I got used to the Habari codebase and also what I wanted to do. I pretty much guarantee that the actual colours wil change, however I’ve got an idea in my head that if executed properly could be pretty good fun for me to see and also could be a good note to stop the redesigning of the site for a good long while.
Habari Article on Linux.com - Slowly but surely the revolution will begin.
Expect breakages, spills and loads of stupid things to go on the site, for a long while, until I get my freak on and actually get to the bottom of where-ever it is that I want to go. Either way I’m hoping to make something to move past my cables design from a few years back.
Edit 1 - So the colour scheme in my mind has settled down a little. There are three more base colours to come, but really that’s only going to be in full view once I’ve sorted out the artwork that is going to be pasted all over this site (from which those three base colours will come from). I’m still playing around with the typography and trying to see if I’ve missed something fundamental in the last 6 months that I’ve been out of the game. More about that laters I guess.
Christian wrote a little post asking why the Habari community was snubbed in the recent Smashing Magazine 10 Weblog Engines Reviewed post.
Why was Habari not included in this list? Well it was included in an honourable list. Instead though they included Joomla and Drupal. All very good applications in their own right, but far too bloated to be considered weblog engines (they’re designed for bigger sites are they not?).
In any case, I feel that the reason why Habari wasn’t included in here is a collection of things, but it is telling. While I wouldn’t go so far and say that Smashing Magazine in the authority of the internet Zeitgeist, I will say that they generally put a lot of effort into their posts and do a certain amount of research, so their not so much dismisal but rather short billing is indicative of where Habari stands right now. The problem is that I don’t think that Habari, the community or software is to blame here; rather I feel it has something to do with the net landscape as we are right now.
You could say that Habari is still pretty young in it’s cycle, however it’s a HELL of a lot more developed than the bit of software called WordPress was when I started using it (version 0.6 I believe). Back then WordPress didn’t have ANY themes. The plugin library was in the single most infant state you could imagine (if you compare it to now). The less we talk about the interface the better (that ship is stll a rudderless pile of shit as they change it more for version 2.7 if the latest betas are to go by, and believe me I don’t care enough to go there anyway). I don’t think the reasons for the lack of credibility can be attributed to the software’s limitations, because if you’re looking for something to post a blog, and enhance your site with any one of the currently available plugins, Habari is a pretty solid foundation that is only moving forward, moving into the future, because honestly all of those other ones that are on the Smashing Magazine post feel like the past.
So what is missing? Blogs are now a standard part of the net landscape. Open source projects are a dime a dozen (hell that list isn’t exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination, since it doesn’t include Habari or Chryp, to name a couple). Blogs are not this new and exciting medium that they were 4 years ago. People know about them and have had one at some point in their lives, even the completely tech neophytes out there will have dabbled. The options to create something online are a lot larger than before.
The other thing is that Habari hasn’t had a catalyst that exploded the scene. There was no Moveable Type changing their license rubbish and now back again (or whatever). That was the push that WordPress needed, initially. Right now, work is being done on WordPress but honestly it feels more like a rudderless titanic. Then you’ve got Textpattern….seriously is the project still alive? A while back I heard of a Textpattern fork, not heard anything else about it since then, but then again I’ve not been actively seeking any information so they could have moved forward?
The thing is that to draw people in there has to be some form of marketing push. What I mean by that is the word of mouth about Habari really has to begin in full steam. The great thing is that people are starting to do this, slowly but surely. Michael is talking more about Habari, as is Owen and Chris. Remember those badges that lived on the side of blogs? Remember the ones for Firefox? The thing with those of course is that the actual image usually pretty distinctive. The firefox logo is extremely iconic. Something akin to this would help spread it out again. It could be a community push that al those actively running their sites on Habari should have the badge to wear proudly.
Clearly there are other things that need to be done, however as with the Habari motto, the word really needs to be spread in a number of ways which can only be a good thing for the software and the community.
After nearly 4 years running the Kode on WordPress, I’m making the jump and going to better pastures. The internet in general is not high on my priority list, however I love the Kode and want the best for it, WordPress has not been the best for it for many many moons, which is probably one of the many reasons that the site got a bit left by the wayside.
Expect a little bit of breakage, maybe even come back later for the new RSS feed (which I think will probably be http://brokenkode.com/atom/1), as I transition over to Habari. See you on the other side.
You know what I find the absolute weirdest thing in the world? I’ve got this Canon LiDe scanner right, got it something like 5 years ago and has served me pretty well in all those years. It’s not the best scanner in the world, but to be honest, based on the fact that most of my stuff is put on the web rather than in print, it’s not exactly the end of the world. The weird thing is that my scanner works right out of the box in Ubuntu. Don’t need to download any drivers, don’t need to mess around with anything, and it works quickly and perfectly. Obviously it’s not all roses right, my Ipod shuffle obviously doesn’t want to play nice with Ubuntu, even though the latest version of Banshee is the music player that I’ve been waiting for all my life. So many great little features have been added to the latest couple of versions since I played last with it. Yeah like that’s any good to me as my fekkin sound card that doesn’t work for toffee and keeps giving me trouble all the time.
So I get back on Windows (because it’s got Photoshop) and fekkin Apache has decided to stop bloody working through XAMPP, so I can’t honestly get any work done for Habari as doing it on a live server takes forever.
I did download the latest and greatest Oxygen icons onto Ubuntu and I’ve got to say they are definitely some of the nicest things I’ve seen in a good long while…shame I couldn’t get the latest version of the Crystal icons to fekkin install (lovely redesign by Everaldo btw), as those look great as well.
Obviously I’ve upset someone in computerland and they’re trying to punish me in every painfully frustrating way. Seriously it’s times like this that I think the magic bullet is getting myself a Mac. But then again everyone says that when all manner of software decides not to work right?
So I finally got around to doing some work on Habari this weekend, which was awesome. First time I actually used SVN and the guys and gals on the channel gave me a right grilling. Obviously I fucked things up the first time around but alas that’s ok, it’s all part of the experience. Below is the screenshot of what the current dashboard is currently looking like. It’s currently employing Blueprint version 0.5 which honestly has made my life soo easy in that I can actually concentrate on designing rather than setting up grids etc. Still LOADS of work to be done, but steadily this little project is coming along pretty nicely.
One thing that has me kind of stumped however is why the hell the tables appear differently? For some reason the height attribute for td element doesn’t work in Firefox. Anyone got any ideas what can be done about this?
The second official release of Habari, version 0.2 is out the door. Everyone has been working real hard, always with love, always with passion. One of the things that this release includes is the user manual which is included with the release. Yes, when you download the software, you’re downloading the manual as well. For the manual we’ve chosen to use the awesome Tiddlywiki for this purpose. Don’t be afraid get involved. Spread the Word!