Nick Lewis: The Blog

Not to go on a rant here, but lately I've become increasingly tired of the hiflautin language of my trade. Its a profession which is infested with poly-word-rendered[1] monstrosities of terminology: "content management system", "constituent relationship management system", "hierarchical taxonomy"... One sometimes gets the sense that such terminology wasn't chosen on the basis of being the most accurate way of describing the given object, but rather because it happened to be the most impressive sounding to the layman.

I'm not a betting man. However, I'd bet you 25 cents that your users will have a much easier time learning how to use Drupal with the interface I've designed below:

WHY? 

This interface is superior to the drupal defaults for a couple key reasons:

1. We can assume that if someone is using your website, they are already familiar, and comfortable with this type of navigation. Nearly every desktop program, from Firefox, to MS Word, to Photoshop, to Explorer, to the Macintosh Finder use this UI pattern. Always seek to design interfaces which your users will already be familiar with.

Today, while talking to Kieran from Civicspace labs, I mentioned that Civicspace would benefit from taking a more informal tone in their interface, documentation, and training. I supported this argument with, "well... ummm... there's -- like -- these studies... -- or something -- somewhere..."

You're damn straight that is powerful evidence!

Will see a few of you at SXSW Interactive tomorrow. Drop me a comment, or contact me if you're visiting my beautiful hometown of Austin, Texas. Many fellow drupal freaks will also be in attendence.

If you're"not from 'round here", be sure to read The unofficial geek guide to getting over yourself at SxSW Interactive 2006 by my friend, and fellow native Austinite David Nunez.Good stuff. I do believe you'll find a smiley face on my badge.

And please.... don't be one of these people: 

Roughly 3 hours ago, my computer froze. As usual, I hit the reset key only to see a black screen and white text alerting me that windows could not load. In some ways this was a blessing because it meant I would finally have to reinstall windows so my laptop could start running decently again.Since I'm used to this sort of thing(windows breaking), I keep all of my important files on a seperate harddisk from the windows install. So I'm back, and I must admit... things are running a lot better. Now ask me how much I'll enjoy running the full battery of windows updates since 2001 on Friday night. Or not, its up to you.

I first discovered sIFR last October. If you've never heard of sIFR, then I suggest you pretend otherwise. Simply nod, smile, and read all about it.

The module is now available for download on CVS.

Yeah... shut yer trap -- I'm making up for lots of lazy mistakes in Curved Slate. Start over in many ways.

Today, I spent quite a bit of time wandering drupal's menu system in search of answers. But instead, I uncovered two techniques which made me rethink the questions I was asking. As the latter sentence suggested, I'm a professional writer of fortune cookies on the side (there aren't many of us left...).

My RSS reader has somewhere's near 800 feeds at this point. In order to cope, I've for a long time had a folder titled, "Feeds I actually read" (yes, a number of my thunderbird folders are jokes that I crack to myself. Its pathetic...). Anyways, one of my favorites in the folder I actually read is a blog called Creating Passionante Users. One of the more recent entries had a graph that I thought every single drupal user, developer, and advocate should see: