Tonight I will be beginning a project on what might be the turning point for b2: a brand new UI.

I'm going to base this on the various UI laws to ensure the best user experience. I'm not saying that you should adopt this in future versions, Michel, it's just a suggestion, and it is almost certainly going to be used for the UI for my b2 control panel.

One of the changes I would absolutely love is the scrapping of the 'team' section: meaning that you incorporate it directly in the post&edit section. The main reason is because the recent posts thing is actually hogging the whole width of the page -- not exactly what i would call 'nice' and 'friendly'.

It'll be in a box next to the recent posts column, and when you click on your own username, you'll be given the option to change your profile. This is in compliance (as always) with one of the most basic UI laws: less clicks, not too much clutter.


If I could have my way I would suggest Blogger-style calendar-based post searching -- which I don't use pretty often, but other users might find it useful.

And then, next to the 'logout' link, i would suggest a search box. this will open a pop-up window with searches for posts. Mind you, this is a suggestion.

Don't remove the top b2bar though, it's wonderful: in fact, one of the advantages b2 holds over greymatter. Blogger looks too Windows-ly, and you're forgetting about the 5% of Mac users on Earth, and that increasing share from new Mac users (and Mac OS X).

Categories are also nice. I'd really like categories, though, it is a kind of filter so your readers can read your posts according to a certain genre -- something that mysql does extremely well, i hear.

Finally, when you click Blog this!, there shouldn't be a redirect page. Instead, you should be redirected immediately to the post&edit page, with red text next to the bold words indicating that your post has been successfully done -- still in compliance with the ui laws.
ian @ 17:29:25 770
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