Just three days ago, WordPress.com blogger BirdAbroad posted a fascinating account of China’s fake Apple Stores (I reblogged the story myself). Today, you can read about the repercussions of the story going global in the Daily Mail or Reuters. It’s fascinating to see how quickly a blog post can get the attention of the international press. And remember, if you want to read it first, read it on a WordPress blog. :)
Ending the day by setting up a fun little side project in Illustrator. The WordPress motto looks good in every language. (The designer in me must note I haven’t kerned these yet.)
The focus for this release was making WordPress faster and lighter. The first thing you’ll notice when you log in to 3.2 is a refreshed dashboard design that tightens the typography, design, and code behind the admin. (Rhapsody in Grey?)
— Matt Mullenweg, WordPress 3.2 now available
Back during the development of WordPress 2.8, the core team decided to solicit some ideas for dashboard refreshes. Two designs inspired by Dean J. Robinson’s Fluency Admin plugin, submitted by Dean and myself, led the informal poll the core team conducted. Ultimately the team decided to save the update for a later version of WordPress and that version came today, when WordPress 3.2 was released with the new dashboard design. A thread on the Make UI blog follows its progress as it came together. We removed unnecessary chrome, refined typography, lightened the page, and generally listened to Alan Cooper‘s advice on interface design:
“No matter how beautiful, no matter how cool your interface, it would be better if there were less of it.”
An aside on typography: I’ve seen a few people question why we chose Arial over Helvetica for most text in the dashboard. I actually believe Arial is a better option when you’re working with text that will be displayed at 13px or below. I know that’s heresy for a graphic designer, but consider this. Helvetica, when it’s installed on Windows PCs, does not work well as a web font. Helvetica Neue is available primarily on Macs and at sufficient weights it looks great, which is why we do use it in some places. But at the default font size in the WordPress dashboard, I think Arial’s readability trumps the dogmatic purity of using Helvetica. I know this is purely subjective and this reasoning won’t change the minds of those who believe Arial is on the same level as Comic Sans — but if the sight of Arial truly offends you, I suggest disabling it OS-wide. You’ll get Helvetica in its place, and everyone will be happy. :) (Update: In the forthcoming 3.2.1 update, WordPress will use the browser-default sans-serif instead, so Mac users will see Helvetica, Windows users will see Arial, and if someone actually specifies what they want their browser default to be, we’ll use that.)
I’m proud of the updated typography and cleaner look of the new dashboard, but my favorite aspect of WordPress 3.2 was a great surprise when I first saw it. It’s also Matt Mullenweg’s favorite new feature — the new distraction-free writing mode. Combined with the Editor Styles feature popularized in last year’s Twenty Ten theme, composing in WordPress is akin to using a minimalist web-based text editor.
Composing this post in Distraction-Free Writing mode
Speaking of Twenty Ten, it’s got a beautiful successor in Twenty Eleven, the new default theme for WordPress. Following up on the improvements we made with last year’s iteration, Twenty Eleven adds a responsive design, post formats, customizable color schemes and layout configurations and more. Read Ian’s introduction to Twenty Eleven for the full rundown. This blog is using Twenty Eleven now with the one-column layout and a custom background.
There’s a ton of other features in 3.2, including faster performance, Browse Happy integration, a more useful admin bar, and hundreds of behind-the-scenes improvements. Read the exhaustive official list to see everything that’s new — then go update your blog, or start a new one!
Yep, I’m reblogging my own post from the VaultPress blog. :) I really enjoyed working with Matthew Woodson on the new illustration he did for us. We’ll be continuing to work together over the next few months, as we lead up to (and celebrate) the public release of VaultPress.
To make room for the hot new art, I busted open the design of the site, getting rid of the borders and background colors, bumping the text up to Twenty-Ten-huge levels, and adding a ton of subtle touches for the Webkit, Opera, and Firefox 4 users to appreciate. Typekit serves up Calluna for headlines and body copy, the typeface we liked so much we used it right in the logo. It’s been lots of fun concentrating on VaultPress over the past few months, and the stuff that’s yet to come is even cooler.
via VaultPress Blog
I’ve been anticipating this trip for so long, I managed to let the date creep up on me without mentioning it here. On Friday I’ll head to my adopted second home of Savannah, Georgia to speak at the inaugural WordCamp Savannah. It’s being organized by my coworker, the inimitable Jane, so you know it’ll be a top-notch operation. And it’s being hosted by SCAD, my alma mater, so the event will cater to my sense of nostalgia. I’ll be talking about the process that was designing and developing Twenty Ten, the new default theme for WordPress. I hope those of you interested in WordPress, or just designing for the web, can make it.
Update: Slides and links from my presentation are now online.
Yesterday, my Automattic colleague Joseph Scott launched the VideoPress Plugin for WordPress.org, meaning anyone with a self-hosted WordPress blog can now use VideoPress and their WordPress.com account for high-quality ad-free video right on their self-hosted WordPress blog. :)
On Friday, I had the great pleasure of attending and addressing WordCamp NOLA, the first WordCamp in this neck of the woods and a great introduction to the WordPress users of the Gulf Coast. The organizers did a fantastic job of putting together a really polished event, and the attendees I was able to speak with had great enthusiasm for WordPress and really great questions for me.
It’s hard to pick out highlights when an event like this goes so well, but for me, as always, it’s all about the people I meet. It’s a real honor when you can walk away from a conference with the feeling that you’ve made a few new friends. Thanks to the organizers, volunteers, speakers and of course the attendees who made for a memorable weekend. I can’t wait to do it again real soon.
Update: Because this got mistakenly posted to Twitter when I moved my blog over to WordPress.com, I should mention that this is an old post, and WordPress for iPhone 2.1 is the most recent version available. :)
Original: After a slight hiccup with 1.2, I’m proud to point you toward WordPress for iPhone 1.21, a pretty substantial update to our mobile app. I wont run down all the features here, but theres lots of new stuff and we’ve already started planning the next version. Download and enjoy! (Composing a post — like I’m doing now — is about a hundred times easier with the landscape keyboard!)
As anyone interested probably knows by now, Apple gave a preview of the new iPhone OS and SDK today, addressing quite a few of the biggest omissions in current iPhone software. From Apple’s annoucement:
With a rich set of over 1,000 new APIs, iPhone SDK for iPhone OS 3.0 beta provides you with an amazing range of technologies to enhance the functionality of your iPhone and iPod touch applications. New APIs also provide support for applications to communicate with hardware accessories attached to iPhone or iPod touch.
The nice part about this, for me, is that I just copied and pasted that quote from Apple’s web site into this post, which I composed using WordPress for iPhone. The future’s gonna be great.
That’s “Face book,” not “Facebook.” Ryan Imel at Theme Playground has compiled a list of Who’s Who in WordPress, bringing together the most comprehensive list I’ve seen if the people working on WordPress and the community that surrounds it. While I was flattered to be included, I’m linking to it not because of that but because I didn’t even know some of the folks on the list, so it was a great way for me to get up to speed, too. If you dig WordPress and want to know more about the people who make it go, this is a great resource.
