Tom Smith accurately points out the usability gaff in being able to tag content 'on the fly' when creating the page using most blog or content management tools. This blog is powered by Drupal, Tom is right...
And here's the rub. Tools like WordPress require you to create a category BEFORE you have created the item you want to add that category too. This is so backward. It'??s a simple usability error. Most web-based software does this and it is such an obvious gaff.
With it being such a source of frustration, I tend not to bother and forget.
It can't be that hard to make a little pop-up window that submits tags to the database as you write the content... else, why doesn't someone just modify the form to create a space to add new tags as you submit the page... easy?
Tom Smith
The Good News: I complained to the good people at WordPress about this and I don't know if they paid any attention, but the latest version deals with this very well. So you can create categories on the fly.
The Bad News: You'll have to complain to the people at Drupal yourself.
The Icky News: I don't know how easy it is for me to "upgrade" my WordPress install, which funnily enough is EXACTLY the same problem as creating-categories-on-the-fly again. Given you have written some software, you can assume people are going to...
a. Hack it
b. Want to update it
c. Want to be able to "b" without losing "a".
But software is so rarely designed from the actual "usage" perspective. In fact, watch most demos for most software, they nearly always have a video that says, look how easy it is to create a single X.... I give X a title, add a picture, and ta da!... They never start from the perspective of... "Now imagine I have two and half thousand X's... look how easy it is to find what I need and edit 48 of them at once" ... which is normally a lot closer to what real life is like.
I guess the reason is simple. Most software has hardly been used. And worse, it has hardly been used by the people who make it. It's shocking but they probably only get to make a few X's before it's out of the door.
A useful exercise creators of tools can do, is to go all misty eyed and before starting on a project, imagine it finished.. completely... then imagine it being used a while, building up dust and cruft and bits and bobs... THEN imagine what people will need to do with it next. The clever part then is building that in from beginning (without getting too carried away with the misty-eyed part). So, for example, organising your folders and files so that a PHP project can accomodate both hack AND upgrades isn't even domestic science, let alone rocket... it just takes a little thought early on in a project...
Jonathan
Spot on. Each time Drupal build another release I have to consider the opportunities created by upgrading to their latest release versus the pain caused in upgrading, which largely means...
1. discovering what modifications have been made between the current version and the upgrade (I only do this, so that if the upgrade goes pear-shaped, I know where to start looking to fix it.)
2. understanding the upgrade path.... can I upgrade from 4.1 to 4.6 or do I need to follow an upgrade path, 4.1 --> 4.2 --> 4.3
3. reminding myself, what customisations have I made to the core code, so that I can re-apply those changes after the upgrade.
4. having the courage to fix what ain't broken.
Your comments spur me on to write a series of posts on 'the problem with open source'
Amir Nathoo
Absolutely agree - I do't understand how web content management and other content management software has lasted so long forcing people to define the categories up-front. Tools like del.ici.ous seem to be turning the tide though and showing others the value of tagging rather than categorisation.
Having worked in the Enterprise Content Management software industry I wished someone would do del.ici.ous for enterprise content as well as web content, so a few friends and I set up tagandfile.com. Same tagging model as del.ici.ous but when you tag a piece of content on your desktop it also uploads to the service for central storage and backup.
Would be good to get your view on this usage model...
Post new comment