(WUWT readers, please excuse this distraction while I holler at WUWT’s hosting provider, wordpress.com. As Willis would say, “my blood is mightily angrified”.)
I have generally been supportive of most wordpress.com upgrades, for example the recent upgrade to allow the top editor bar to float with scrolling is a HUGE time saver.
Unfortunately, the new Beep Beep Boop “upgrade” is a crash-and-burn moment in user interface design.
Top 10 reasons the new WordPress Beep Boop Boob editor is a stunning failure.
1. It turns a process that used to take 1-2 seconds into something that takes several seconds, sometimes as long as 30 seconds. My timing this morning was 17 seconds to get the create a new post dialog. A second attempt took 32 seconds after I cleared the crash dialog (see below).
2. It is visually annoying. It makes me want to scream at the screen while it takes all those extra seconds to load, seen below.
The reason for the “beep beep boop” is that whoever programed it, realized it takes longer, and they needed something to let the end user know the program was doing something. Classic bloatware failure.
3. It makes wordpress.com seem juvenilized.
4. It is inconsistent with the rest of the wp.com user experience. For example, no “beep boop” appears when you try to create a new page.
5. It presents a smaller editor than we used to get, which isn’t fully representative of the CSS settings for width of your theme.
6. It was foisted on us with no warning. And this is the thing I hate the most, many of these “upgrades” just appear overnight. Microsoft learned this lesson of just foisting unwanted upgrades on end users without notice and allows you to opt-out. You should learn this lesson too. New is not always better.
7. It crashes:
8. The “Welcome to an easier way to create on WordPress.com! Missing the old editor? No worries, just switch to classic mode. “ feature doesn’t seem to “stick”.
9. It comes up in text editor mode, more work, more wait to switch to visual editor mode.
10. Whenever I accidentally stumble on it now, I realize my mistake and back out of it, and find the correct link to bring up the real editor. When users actively work to avoid using a new piece of software, because it wastes time, annoys them, and crashes, you know you have a MEGAFAIL on your hands.
Whoever came up with this idea, along with the person who approved implementing it deserves a virtual 2×4 upside the head to knock some sense into them.
For me, it may be the tipping point to abandon wordpress.com and go to a paid service where I at least can control my own user experience by choosing not to install inane upgrades.
UPDATE 8/27/14 :
WordPress seemed oblivious, but I and many others continued to bombard them with emails, posts, phone calls, and anything we could do to tell them how bad this change was.
Today, all of the sudden, things were back to normal, and this appeared above the editor page:
That “new and improved posting experience” aka the “beep boop” editor, is corp-speak for “we took this turkey out back and shot it in the head”.
Two thoughts:
1. Users win. Lesson to WordPress – trust your users.
2. Thank you WordPress for finally seeing the light
“Classic bloatware failure.”
You need to send feedback about that. I do software development for a living, and when we’re deciding what to do, we pretty much look at numbers of user requests and prioritize off that. If enough people are saying, “this is slow and janky,” that bubbles to the top. And you have to get heard because simplifying and streamlining code (paying off “tech debt”) takes time.
I don’t have as much experience as you with the Boop Editor. One encounter was enough for me and I stopped doing my blog and have since done nothing but complaints there using the now-crippled editor we all once had as the default. I’ve been with WordPress since 2006. There have been bumps, but this is just a disaster and their failure to roll back is frustrating (to say the least!).
Hmm — don’t see it, fortunately. Runs on java-script so gets denied by Firefox’s NoScript, which is a lifesaver & vastly speeds up page-loading.
You have described Windows f***ing 8. It was meant to work for mouse-less touch screens on tablet-like devices and computers. But most of us still buy a mouse and notebooks with mouse pads and buttons. The interface results in a maddening rate of unintended deletes with no ability to recover, and sudden switches and flips from what I am working on to the [cough, hack, gag] tiled “easy access” full screen program menu. I hate it more than anything computer related I have ever worked on. I cut my teeth on the operating system of a WANG and would gladly go back to it if Windows f***ing 8 was my only other choice.
Pamela, this free fixit is how I tolerate Windows effing 8. Get it, don’t look back.
http://www.classicshell.net/
“3. It makes wordpress.com seem juvenilized.”
That seems to be the directions ALL websites are going – even my bank, fercryin’outloud..
The kindergarten inmates are running the asylum. >:-(
I have been commenting here for several years. This new version of wordpress is a pain in the ass. I just spent ten minutes logging into wordpress so a comment could be posted. Instead it took me to a ‘dashboard’. It also changes my user name to a truncation of my email rather than my full name which I have always posted under. No more comments from me with this ridiculous software. Steve Keohane
I agree. Windows 8. A total effing nightmare. Thanks for the fix Anthony. I don’t have Windows 8 yet but I guess it will be unavoidable eventually.
One wonders if this had anything to do with the appearance of the mystery “like” button a short while back?
Windows 8.1 is fine as long as you are using Windows 7 /sarc
In addition to a Windows 7 box, I have three identical XP boxes all configured to the same hardware standard, one of which is always in continuous use. With any luck, at least one of them will remain functional until I breath my last breath.
Here is a question for the WUWT readership: Is one of the reasons why Chinese engineers are more productive than American engineers is that most of their desktop applications still rely on user-friendly Windows XP?
I’ve been in IT for over 30 years. This is what you get by hiring recent college grads who think they are smarter than the rest of the world and management who thinks cheaper labor is better.
Thank you, Anthony. I was going to email you about it.
I also HATE the Beep Beep Boop editor.
It locks up one of my browsers and it’s slow with the other,
Let me repeat myself for WordPress: I HATE the Beep Beep Boop editor.
Please remove it as the default WordPress editor.
This latest change to the interface is mind-numbing and frustrating. Even at “free” its not worth it dealing with. Grey Enigma.
One of the curses of having an in-house software development staff is that they must keep developing or lose their jobs. The low-hanging fruit has long ago been picked in many applications but no developer ever got a raise for saying everything is just fine. Further incremental improvements will only carry you through one, or two at best) performance rating periods.
As an easy example, MS Word and Excel were probably at their optimal efficiency and ease of use around the year 2000. However the development team had to keep adding features that only professional editor -might- ever need (who wanted “Reading Pane”?) to be doing something, and them turned them on as default because no one would otherwise even know they existed. When that string ran out, it was time to change the interface, just ’cause.
Even creating a turd can be good for developers. Releasing a disaster is always first blamed on the discomfort of users with new features, but the disaster also has the perverse effect of increasing overtime, and creating a triumph for the team when they finally fix the problems.
The ultimate solution for Win8 for my wife (even after ClassicShell) was a Mac Airbook.
/angry crazyman rant.
Steve Jobs would have said, “Pay me now or pay me later.”
Ben — the process you describe for software roadmap/development is a recipe for ultimate failure. Back in the Netscape days, I had these same conversations with the product manager of a couple of products there, and saw a similar problem with what was once a successful operating system.
The problem is that you try to satisfy current customers by bending to their will. The product becomes more and more focused on their requirements. One day, you notice that you are not getting many (any) new customers, but product management still insist on asking existing customers what they want, without balancing it by going and asking people that decided not to buy why not. Of course, the second part is harder to do, and the answers are generally unwelcome, but if you want a future, you sometimes have to piss off (a little) existing customers.
In the worst case, you end up like Apollo. They made HUGE (and IMHO stupid) dptations to support their biggest customer. One day, they only really had that one huge customer left. Then that customer decided that they needed to change platform to one of the more ubiquitous ones. Guess what happened to Apollo (which was then owned by HP) and how fast.
Having said all of that, whatever changes you make, never just foist them on people with no warning, and public beta phase. Unfortunately most of WordPress seems to stuff that never really made it out of beta anyway.
Was it a mistake? Or did they do it to us on purpose?
Another example: iOS 7 is an entire software platform that was foisted on us overnight. It’s a shadow of iOS 6, just tinkering for the sake of tinkering and decimating what was a smooth and intuitive user interface. I know some people who have hacked their way back to iOS 6 but that will be a temporary fix because soon their apps won’t be supported.
You said it well. I also come from a development environment. You can always tell when I development team has been set loose without regard for real-world needs of users. The comparison to Windows 8 is valid. And poignant. You’d think WP might learn something from the others’ disasters, but apparently not. I would be seriously considering changing platforms if I could find a platform I don’t hate … or is so expensive I can’t even think about it. Maybe, in the end, they’ll just push me into giving up the whole thing. I’d rather not … but when a hobby becomes more angst than fun, it’s time to rethink.
Thanks for a professionally written piece. It would be nice if someone at WordPress read it. Many of us have written about this in the past few days, but I doubt they care. WP seems to be bent on doing their own thing without regard for customer satisfaction. Pity about that. Reminds me of DEC … Wang .. GTE … Where are they now?
As Anthony said, this new editor angrifies my blood mightily. I reverted immediately to the “Classic” editor … don’t’cha love a world where something we used yesterday is “classic” today? But as Anthony sez, it doesn’t stick, and come up with the Beep Beep Boop editor each time I return.
Fail. Epic fail.
w.
Ee Windows 8, you can still buy Windows 7 Business with the option to switch to 8 in the future, which is what I did recently wity my new Dell Latitude laptop. Lots of Dells come with that OS option, as do some other leading brands. I’ve read that W8 is pretty much W7 with the touch screen on top, making it difficult.
“WordPress Beep Boop Boob editor ”
So, what exactly needed to be edited on WordPress’s Boobs in the first place?
I use Windows Live Writer. It is simple to use, easy to paste images etc, and automatically published to WP at the press of the button
interesting that the classic editor doesn’t stick – according to a “staff” person in the second & third posts on this wordpress forum page http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/new-post-editor-improvements#post-1998366 – (1) the editor pane has been enlarged – and (2) the classic editor should “stick” once chosen – UNTIL you clear your cookies
Apparently it’s browser specific. It works on some, not on other. Not on Chrome.
one benefit of running WP on dedicated server, can update as you need and also run clone site to test updates.
downside is you are responsible for the server.
managed dedicated servers are expensive but they maintain the o/s and hardware for you, basically they are your businesses tech dept.
Do you have any Ad blockers installed in your browser? or anything else blocker ? it may be something to do with that. Have a look at the web-page source code and see if there are any external urls that may be slowing things down. Looking at Disconnect fro Firefox I am getting the following disconects;
1 Advertising – Let through
2 Analytics
15 Content
2 Facebook
2 Google+ and
2 Twitter
And this upgrade breaks the use of the “code” shortcode. The code has characters such as < (less than) replaced by HTML entities. Fortunately reverting to "Classic mode" is offered, and fixes this problem.
This is another example of programmers & developers who are legends in their own minds. As a result, they think they can do no wrong and become obsessed with making changes (often just to make changes). They have yet to learn the humility that comes from failure and understanding the truth of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
RCM on August 17, 2014 at 9:15 am
As an easy example, MS Word and Excel were probably at their optimal efficiency and ease of use around the year 2000.
Dang right. And dang right that most change was ‘change for the sake of change’ … And encouraged by management wanting an ‘upgrade’ to charge for.
This version of WordPress has a “toolbar” at the top with no way to remove it. I hate it, hate it..
Reblogged this on Breise! Breise! Extra! Extra! and commented:
I switched back to my old editor mode because this new one was not easy to use and hard to navigate.
Would it be possible to have a counter showing in real time how many people are currently viewing a thread. (Or does this already exist? )
Reblogged this on gottadobetterthanthis and commented:
Just ‘cuz.
If the WP tech says it does stick (in Classic Editor) unless you clear cookies, the check your Win Internet Explorer. It has a toggle to clear your cookies everytime you get out of IE, or not. Of course you may “want to” clear cookies each time – then this won’t help.
Not in Chrome. Cookies or not.
Well stated. There are many of us who have been posting our complaints. One response received was essentially ‘too bad’, eventually the Classic version will be gone and you will have to accept the new one. When that day comes I will move my blog and I will migrate my content.
In today’s world, a business either grows or it eventually dies. It is possible that moving to an I.E. 8 style interface for use with tablets and mobile devices is seen by corporate management as being essential to WordPress’ long term survival.
On the other hand, if a majority of current WordPress users prefer the more traditional interfaces, and will prefer those legacy interfaces for some time into the future, then WordPress has now jumped the shark and is inevitably on a pathway towards extinction.
They can’t distinguish between “fad” and “future.” I don’t know a single writer or editor who works on a tablet or cell phone.You might respond to comments on one of these little devices, but you’re not going to create anything new. You can’t edit a photograph on a surface that small, not if you’re serious about it nor can you create something longer than a few sentence, especially if it includes illustrations. Unless writers, photographers, and other artists won’t exist in the future — or won’t be blogging (maybe because they declare us obsolete and make it impossible?) — they are getting way ahead of themselves. Just because something is selling well doesn’t mean it’s replacing something else.
More of the same: maps.google.com did the same thing. I find the new and disimproved Google Maps does less far less well than the “classic”, but it is wrapped in a pretty new package. And Pamela is completely right – for us dinosaurs who still use a mouse and a real full sized screen, the simpleware is frustrating. The reality is, sales of what we would call real computers, even laptops, are falling and tablets are apparently the wave of the future. I predict what’s old will be new again when the resolution of the smart-crapola nears something reasonable again. I’m amazed people are happy poking at something with any detail at all using a tool with the resolution of a finger. One day, we will have either eyeball pointing, or a neural control interface (like the Borg). Hey Apple, steal this: use your facetime camera to detect where my eyes are looking. That’s my mouse, and button push with blink is a click, and double blink is double click. Oh, rats, it doesn’t work in the car because of vibrations? Then just keep finger pushing too. A smart phone for me isn’t a phone, it’s a modem / backup internet search device. I have a dedicated cell phone and it is far superior for that purpose. And my final word of not-so-wisdom, if you have to call it “smart”, it isn’t. Smart grid? Smart growth? Smart tyranny?
A problem I run into occasionally with wordpress is that it will tell me I’m posting too quickly, even if I’m not. I then have to re-submit and hope that it doesn’t duplicate, and even then it will go through moderation first making more work for you.
When did Microsoft ever let you opt out of one of its gratuitous UI “upgrades”? I’m still using XP and Office 2007 because they’re better, darn it — and Windows 8 belongs on a toy, not a real computer.
Obviously a poorly designed Java implementation.
I find win 8 a good operating system, the best MS has made and I find it fine for a non touch screen. The problem with it is that it’s too much of a departure from win 7 but once you learn it …….
so far there’s been three invests out in the Atlantic that they’ve hyped as developing….
…every time I’ve gone back to check on them
they’re gone………….LOL
A year ago my hard drive crashed and instead of reinstalling windows I changed to Linux Ubuntu. I do not want to use windows any more. In windows every time I wanted to try out a new application, a toolbar was installed in my browser, even if I ticked on the “no thanks, I don’t want any toolbar” option. And uninstalling the application and the toolbar was a pain, And something remains inside the registry, which only gets bigger over time.
With linux I don’t have any toolbar installed in my browser, I have openoffice as a productivity suite, which is free and it is enough for my needs. Less viruses and more control over your archives are other advantages, provided you know some unix scripting.
“Whoever came up with this idea, along with the person who approved implementing it deserves a virtual 2×4 upside the head to knock some sense into them.”
Yeah but the models showed it to work flawlessly.
8. The “Welcome to an easier way to create on WordPress.com! Missing the old editor? No worries, just switch to classic mode. “ feature doesn’t seem to “stick”.
===
My guess is they are running this option using cookies. Your probably, like any sensible persion set Firefox to clear cookies on closing. Hence it does not stick.
If my guess is correct, this should be done within the WP database
I worked in IT for many years, as an outsider: Telecom Manager. I didn’t have much to do with the daily ins and outs of the IT development. My stuff was cut and dry. Calls in, calls out. We did almost all of our development for ourselves only. The number one bottom line was functionality. It’s funny. We were able to develop many “modern” software conveniences all on our own, often years before the mainstream software companies were able to provide. We created our own pollers, our own scripts, even had our very own database administrator who created our very own platforms. One single dit and the whole staff worked towards resolution, johnny on the spot. We were able to sell many of our software evolutions on the open market. It is the beauty of self-development. We ran our very own specialized environment, tailor made for our business. It was a genesis brought about by self-ownership and small business. Out there in the real world, you get what you get.
WP annoyed me long before this. The only use I have for it is to be able to post in these threads.
You will not escape the powers of Beeb Beeb Boob.
Strongly note that the one demographic that should have already converted to climate alarm skepticism based on intelligent reason but hasn’t is the urban tech crowd, heads full of buzzwords and hipsterism. Thank anti-intellectual college indoctrination for that, outside of most of the hard sciences, but fully at hold in the professions…as the temperature now conspires to collapse their new religion. Without a Steve Jobs character to literally scream at anti-social programmers and now ladder climbing “brogrammer” sociopathic jerks, a sort of law of nature kicks in that egomaniacs will screw things up, like that story of the scorpion stinging the frog to its own river crossing demise. But the trained litigious and politically correct activist nature of educated professionals they are forced to hire now also makes a lot of bosses into wimps.
Blogspot has a similar floating tool bar and it loads quickly.
I like Forth. No C stack thrashes.
http://spacetimepro.blogspot.com/2014/04/lpc812-devl-20-march-2014.html
Absolutely, right in your assessment A W. Whoever thought of this peculiar distraction should be put back on sanitary engineering duties.
NikFromNYC says:
August 17, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Strongly note that the one demographic that should have already converted to climate alarm skepticism based on intelligent reason but hasn’t is the urban tech crowd, heads full of buzzwords and hipsterism.
People who write software are easily fooled. People who design hardware not so much.
skeohane says: “I just spent ten minutes logging into wordpress so a comment could be posted.”
I’ve had to do this for over a year. It’s a gigantic pain in the butt to compose a comment, fill in the blanks, then have it lost in the ether when WP says, in its best Ralph Nedry voice: “Uh, uh, uh! You can’t comment! You’re not logged in to that account!”
“It also changes my user name to a truncation of my email rather than my full name which I have always posted under.”
Aha. You’re laboring under the misconception that WP uses your user name to track your account. HAHAHAAHAH! They use your email account! Always have.
One thing: avoid at all cost having multiple WP blogs with the same email associated with more than one. Okay, two things: If you use, say, your “Dr. Snarkipuss” WP blog to comment here, never open WUWT before logging onto Dr. Snarkipuss. It’s sometimes advisable not to check the “Keep me logged in” box when you log into a WP blog.
Rumor has it that the beep boop poop window is being replaced with a sing-along feature in the next WP release.
Singalong? Wow, now THERE’S something I can relate to. Will it also record? I mean, you know, so we can cross-post to Twitter and Facebook and Tumblr? Maybe Skype it too? Let’s make WordPress the premium Karaoke blogging platform! This is mind numbing while simultaneously giving me a migraine. Ignore the paradox. It’s just the dying spasms of brain cells in distress.
I feel your pain, most of my favorite software is 10 to 15 years old. Some of it was coded for the 2Gig HDD era. By which I mean it’s fast, reliable and it does everything I want and it’s easy to use. While all the new versions of the same programs I find almost unusable, their interface make me absolutely furious. I never stop cursing Microsoft. And every new version of operating system has been far more of a PITA than the last one. I despise new software and new phones. But more than anything else, touch screen interfaces are the quintessence of a crime against humanity.
Hi guys, I’m not a developer or any kind of IT specialist. I’m just a simple blogger. And this beep beep boop thing is driving me insane! I was so glad to find the possibility of reverting to the “classic” editor (for as long as it lasts).
Besides all the complaints above, with which I agree with every one, I also find it ridiculous and extremely annoying that when you publish a post, you are not taken back to your blog to see the actual post!
I tried to publish a post about a dozen times until I opened my blog homepage in another tab and realised it had indeed published. All I was getting was that stupid juvenile notice “your post has been updated. Well done!” or some such inane notice.
Whose bright idea was that to separate a blog editor from the blog itself, WordPress? The developer responsible ought to be fired forthwith.
In an effort to make this thread somewhat climate related, I would like to observe that the people who bring you Windows 8.1 and WordPress are highly trained, talented, engineering professionals. The people who bring you computer programs called “climate models” are hacks who don’t really know what they are doing. So if Windows 8.1 and WordPress are both in error in some aspects, just imagine how screwed up the models are!
By the way, you can make Windows 8.1 act a lot like Windows 7 without any needed addons and I have to use it at work. I much, much prefer a nice Linux box and am typing from an LXDE desktop right now on an old Vista class emachine cheap box. But what really makes my day is when I use my personal MacBook Pro from 2008 to work on. Dang desktop looks the same as it does on my 2004 machine G4 machine and both look just like any new 2014 OS X 10.9.4 box you could pick up today. (I did put 8 gigs of memory in the 2008 Intel box)
Moral? Change can be good, but change just to be changing is usually a mistake.
Hi Anthony, your hollering at wordpress.com is completely unjustified. You are the one who is doing the extremely foolish thing to run a website this big on wordpress.com. It should naturally be on wordpress.org hosted on your own (virtual) server where you have complete control of updates and plugins. Your hollering is like a 10 year old being annoyed that his legs are too long for the trike that’s intended for toddlers. Get off of wordpress.com and move to selfhosted wordpress asap. You will not have those issues then!
I had trouble logging in to WordPress before to comment, and again just now. “Capcha” is bad enough, but when your WordPress login fails, the screen now wiggles in a stupid, childish way. I tried to get a new password, only to find that it sent the email to an account that no longer exists. I finally was able to login using a user ID and change the contact email.
After it first appeared I went over to their feedback to ask about it. They’re reply (to others asking) as near as I can recall was they weren’t going to go back and you just needed to live with it.
Terrible, terrible, editor. Childish and narcissistic programming and programmer.
Oh, and to Hajo Smit, why would you ever have any kind of commercial relationship with this kind of company?
The Swedish branch of eBay, a.k.a. Tradera, did this sort of stunt a while ago. They closed the old well-functioning website and launched overnight without warning an untested website and the result was any but successful. They quickly realized to operate both in parallel and promised to keep the old one to the end of this year.
They have been less than receptive to most of the problems identified, such as of creating new auctions. Something that has become more time consuming now. When buying, all searches of any items are done initially with the non-functioning search option “relevant“. Have not seen any working search option like that anywhere yet and don’t expect to find it in the future either. (What’s “relevant” to one person, isn’t nessesarely relevant to any other, but they are not of required level of understanding, like on several other websites …)
By not listening to the buyers, then they commit the classic mistake in trading … If they don’t change their attitude, they will lose many of those who are active on the website today. The headquarters of eBay does not seem to care …
Dear Mr. Watts,
The key, obvious & recognized thing going on here is that mobile phones & social media are on a huge roll, and they’re cutting into the tradition desktop & website scene.
The REAL KEY, but somehow subtle & vaguely-sensed thing going on here is that females took to the new computerized telephone (and ‘simplistic’ ways of using them) in truly massive droves … after we all had spent 20 years chewing our lip & fretting about how in the heck we were going to create a sustainable, healthy Digital Era/Culture … with essentially no women. Because that’s exactly what we have in programming, computing and webcraft – way, way, way too few females.
Well, the answer to the sparsity of girls & women in computers is now, literally, in hand. Unfortunately (for you & me), the solution came with an equally-massive shift to the most-dreaded drawbacks of classic mindless exploitative Consumerism.
I’m with you, Anthony. The ‘dummied-down’ solution is a painful step backwards. And it’s not just WordPress. Oh, no. All digital stakeholders from Microsoft and Apple on down are heavily affected. (Apple of course just guzzles the Kool Aid.)
There is a serious near civil-war situation going on in Ubuntu. Mark Shuttleworth has alienated a lot of his traditional computer user-base & contributors (yeah, virtually all of them male), by turning his Linux UI into basically a phone, and not an impressive phone at that, imo. (That’s what Matt Mullenweg is doing with WordPress, too.)
I have dabbled with WordPress since very near its beginning, but never ‘on the dot-com side’; always self-hosted. Before that I experimented extensively with other CMS, and before that I wrote several meaningful sites by hand. I’ve kept WP on a localhost server environment for many years. I follow the scene.
Like the old song sez; “Nobody does it better [than WordPress] … tho sometimes I wish someone would”.
In the case of Anthony Watts and WUWT, going with WP Dot Com may be the grin-and-bear-it optimum (imperfect) solution. I’ve seen you lay your relevant WP (dot-com) argument-cards face-up on the table on previous occasions. Other significant community leaders & contributors continue to express appreciation to Anthony for his advice to use WordPress, and to let ‘the dot-com side’ handle the gory backend load.
Ultimately acting in our interests is the fact that Evolution stands still for no Man. Or Woman. Or Website Software. Or Consumer Industry. Darwin’s Dictum is no tender comfort … but it vexes those who would dumb us all down worse than it does us. “We” are the Variations that enable Selection to work.
Like with freedom, there is a price to computerized self-determination. There are different ways to meet the costs … but if in the end the cost of a successful WUWT is the acceptance of WordPress Dot Com foibles … that wouldn’t be the worst compromise I’ve seen this week. 😉
Thanks to Ted Clayton.
Well said sir.
Good news for Windows 8 haters, you’ll be able to try out Windows 9 next month or so :
http://winsupersite.com/windows/coming-soon-threshold-public-preview
I would cheer … but I think I’ll wait and see what they actually give us before I start the party.
It’s a licensing issue. I use ckEditor for a few of my sites too (the “classic” WP editor). It’s really easy to use, greatly functional, and has a great UI. WP doesn’t want to abide by their licensing rules.
I also occasionally build a site that requires WP, and I have to say for the amount of time WP has been out there for development it’s still painfully primitive, with an insanely steep learning curve for template development. If I make even the most simplistic changes to the UI I can’t switch between templates while retaining those changes. Although great for a simple blog, there are easily 10 major features that simply don’t exist that would make it useful to integrate into other sites.
And yeah, it sucks to install a few WP installations, then have WP own your name for every one of them, even the ones like WUWT where I’m just a guest. My WP account that I created to work on other sites should have NOTHING to do with WUWT.
Even for this comment, I had to ‘log in’ and I couldn’t remember my password since I haven’t had to enter it for months, then got put on “wait a few minutes to try again”. Sorry WP, but you suck.
CodeTech @August 17, 2014 at 3:02 pm,
Here’s the popular CKEditor plugin for WordPress: http://wordpress.org/plugins/ckeditor-for-wordpress/ … and here’s CKEditor’s subdomain for WordPress: http://wordpress.ckeditor.com/
Respectfully disagree. They charge nothing, and are available for help all the time. Ask for your money back if you don’t like it.
New is not always better. Flickr.com?
Anthony,
Can I suggest that if you go private, go with the same host as JoNova? The layout and comment usability of her blog is unparralleled in my experience. Maybe that can reduce the hosting cost for both of you.
Just a suggestion.
Grant says: “The problem with it is that it’s too much of a departure from win 7 but once you learn it …”
Any decent, well designed upgrade should not require the end-user to “learn it”. A new operating system, sure. But not an upgrade!
Same applies to any application upgrade. For example: Many years back, Apple blew it with their iLife upgrade which also “upgraded” iMovieHD where users had to re-learn app and get replacement SFx Add-ons.
Truthseeker @August 17, 2014 at 4:35 pm,
The JoNova site, http://joannenova.com.au/, is “Powered by WordPress”.
Beta Blocker says:
August 17, 2014 at 8:58 am
Pamela Gray says: August 17, 2014 at 8:23 am
You have described Windows f***ing 8. It was meant to work for mouse-less touch screens on tablet-like devices and computers. But most of us still buy a mouse and notebooks with mouse pads and buttons.
In addition to a Windows 7 box, I have three identical XP boxes all configured to the same hardware standard, one of which is always in continuous use. With any luck, at least one of them will remain functional until I breath my last breath.
Here is a question for the WUWT readership: Is one of the reasons why Chinese engineers are more productive than American engineers is that most of their desktop applications still rely on user-friendly Windows XP?
———————————————————————————————————————————-
I would not have W8 if Classic Shell had not been invented. The program allows you to configure your desktop as W7 or XP. There are still some annoying W8 functions, but liveable. Compatibility, however, sucks big time. W7 could handle just about anything, but W8 simply refuses to run some older programs, and am still waiting for several upgrades. I use a British version of W8; much less clutter and only have to make allowances for that added “U” the Brits favoUr.
Oh No! Another Wang VS-100 operator? What did you work on next? Dec/Digital?
tsk tsk That is sooo sad. 🙂 🙂
How about IBM 3270PCs? Got them lurking in the background too?
Wow. Wang. Digital. Blast from the past. Those were the first two systems I worked on. They were big … WordPress should think about that. Oh, and GTE. Remember them? Backbone of the Internet?
Just like ‘climate scientists’ ™ if they didn’t f#k with things they wouldn’t have a job.
Microsoft seems to work like a pendulum, 98 good, ME bad, XP good, Vista bad, W7 good, w8 bad
I hope everyday Anthony will dump WP and go to a Vbulletin Forum with a front page like this site http://www.overclockers.com/
There is so much information here that it deserves to be divided up and categorized like only vbulletin can do
I suppose all you lot must be writing your own blogs. But for the common or garden reader of WUWT, I see no change. Just as easy to post a comment today as it was yesterday. Mind you, I still use Windows XP and Outlook Express, even though every now and then I get idiotic messages telling me to upgrade as they are no longer supported. That is good, if they are no longer supported, then it is not worth while hackers writing worms and other nasties for them. Also recently silly messages warning me to update the drivers – whatever they may be!
ATheoK, those were the days. Remember the no-graphics game installed on Wangs? The dungeon one? You can still play it. And it still recognizes when you swear at it for killing you the umpteenth time. Plus the floppies! Big square things that were truly floppies! And punch card chads. Gawd. Spent an entire week going through a 1000 piece stack of my data flicking off chads. And every screen had a burned in main menu you could see even when the thing was turned off. Portland, Oregon was a hotbed for Wang users. We all swore by them even though the server stacks regularly overheated unless the air conditioning units were aimed directly at the row of stacks. Still, I remember those days so fondly.
Actually it wasn’t a dungeon as much as a cave in a forest.
Speaking of old stuff, I sent messages via BBS (bulletin board system). A ubiquitous activity on black computer screens with gold font. And I recall it was all capital case in the beginning. Still, it was very popular among young researchers.
James the Elder says:
August 17, 2014 at 6:13 pm
Can’t you just change your dictionary these days?
I maintain that this is all just a simple spelling error. It is Wordmess.
WUWT says, “6. It was foisted on us with no warning. And this is the thing I hate the most, many of these “upgrades” just appear overnight. Microsoft learned this lesson of just foisting unwanted upgrades on end users without notice and allows you to opt-out. You should learn this lesson too. New is not always better.”
Well at least it makes a good analogy for daft, green, top-down reforms of energy and agriculture. (:
How about booting a PDP8 by flipping switches and pressing enter several times?
Looks to me like the old editor for this comment. Now let’s try some html tags
italic
strike<:no tag>
Now I’ll press the Enter keeryy./$f#
I’m convinced that Windows 8 – and to a lesser extent other software “upgrades” – are the root cause of the Western Economies decline in productivity over the last half decade.
M Courney: Wait till you see the subscription rate for Windows 9 and the fact that it won’t let you log in using a separate password for the microsoft store from your version of windows. All of office is not subscription and does non-stop end-run authentication authorization loops through your e-mail if you try to be productive from a mobile device. Its sickening.
Linux is a very decent salve for Windows-lamentations. If it’s not a perfect cure, it’s major fun – even after years of familiarity. In my Ubuntu library (Debian), there are emulators for all the pioneer systems mentioned here, and many more. (Zenith Z-150 (alas, not in Debian) was mine … a Mil-Surp castoff not even classy enough for the S-100 bus … but it was a dual-CPU, with Assembler, Disassembler, MS-DOS 2 for the 8088 and CPM for the 8085. It gave me a WAY better start than folks get today.)
To counteract the adversities of Social ‘potato-chip’ Media is much easier than mitigating MS-hegemony. No need to run the WordPress gauntlet, or climb the Drupal Matterhorn. There are many drastically-simpler, stable, mature CMS, blog-script and wikis that will do right by your content, export & migrate to your next step, and come for a vanishing sliver of the (often misplaced) intellectual outlay of WordPress & Co.
The root problem with WordPress & Matt Mullenweg these days is that they have their best attention fixed on Drupal & Dries Buytaert (and on Facebook & Twitter) – on their competition with them … and not on you & me.
More real websites owned by real people is the real cure for what’s wrong on the Internet today.
I had to have Windows 8 deleted from a new computer (to replace my literally defunct old one) after having a nightmare time trying to write a conference paper using my preferred Word Perfect. I lost vital days worth of time trying to master Windows 8, then realizing it was a lost cause because of incompatibility. My blood pressure went through the roof.
Our IT team doggedly continued to replace old computers with new ones with Windows 8, and my colleagues almost to a man returned them for reinstallation of Windows 7. There are a few, however, who feel the need to master the latest thing, and then spend the ensuing months complaining about how difficult things have become.
garymount says:
August 17, 2014 at 2:54 pm
Good news for Windows 8 haters, you’ll be able to try out Windows 9 next month or so : http://winsupersite.com/windows/coming-soon-threshold-public-preview
__
That’s cold. I guess the x8086 lineage had to eventually snuff it, but I would have had it put down rather than sadistically torture the user base like that.
Praise be to heaven for Classic Shell for Windows 8. I don’t use a single Windows 8-mode app. I’m also thankful we still have Windows 7 available.
I’m adding a reminder to send a donation for Classic Shell.
Pamela: The only part I remember fondly was how revered I was as an IT wizard. The Wangs were easy to run. I did cheat though. I’ve used ‘patchit’ a hexadecimal program for ‘correcting’ mistakes on the disk without intervening software, much like Norton’s original NU.
Adventur, (that non graphics game), was kinda fun for slow weekends; though I deleted it when my employees were devoting improper attention to it. IBM’s version is entering a sewer, but almost identical otherwise. It was fun just to throw curses or crazy solutions just to see the responses. That was around the same time we’d type in names or phrases into MS Word to see the ‘suggested correction’; definitely not politically correct suggestions.
IBM’s version was known as ‘advent’ and you can often still find it on mainframes. My understanding is that the original was written on a DEC machine which was popular at many colleges. I first learned antique COBOL on a DEC and punch cards. Later I took FORTRAN on a client to some distant IBM mainframe where we had to
a) write our programs
b) type the programs onto punch cards (that were punched, but not lettered)
c) then if you were wise, run the cards through a card reader to have the program punched lettered in to make them readable.
And it was the proverbial submit the job, come back tomorrow and receive the output along with account metrics for how much of my allotted CPU time was used.
Yeah, terminal 0 always had letters burned in as we always kept that one on all day to watch for messages (machine ones).
I forget how much those dang floppys cost; everything Wang was bloody expensive. I replaced all of the Wang terminals, (except terminal 0 of course) with IBM PCs running emulation software and easily based the ROI justification on paying reduced maintenance fees.
Our 288mb removable drives were something like $35K for the whole machine and $55K if we bought two.
I spent a weekend making a bootable 65mb removable drive for the system. Wangs had a bad habit of multiplying bad drives. When a drive went bad it was a mistake to just pop in a good drive as the drive box would immediately destroy the good removable. It was far cheaper to boot up on the 65mb and find out what was wrong first, clear buffers then install a good 288.
DEC, CP/M, Wang, IBM TSO/CMS, IBM PCs (original two box 8088 with one box holding the add on 10mb hard drive), Compaq clam shell portable, Osborne, Tandy, … It’s a very long list and I considered virtually all of it wonderful fun.
Even today I dabble and try t keep an eye on tech news. When the software beta teams have a lot of very angry beta testers (Win 8) it’s a good possibility that ordinary users will hate it even more upon release.
Apparently the whole Win 8 concept was rammed through by ‘executives’ and ‘marketing’ concept groups that firmly believed people would learn to cope. What the ‘executives’ ignore is that many people actually use the machines for very serious work, not play. Most of the Win 8 design centers on ‘social’ designs ignoring serious work. The MS ‘help’ forums are full of listed problems, most of which receive lip service, including the dreaded and utterly useless ‘reformat and reinstall’ suggestions or are ignored altogether. It seems very few help desk types are willing to tell certain executives just how dumb their approach is.
Excel is such fun under Win 8, (NOT!). Having a touch screen is just a tad easier than always using a mouse; but a mouse is required.
Microsoft was never any good at ‘first’ attempts at anything. Their second attempts were often just usable and it wouldn’t be until their third or later attempts that the software would be ‘good’. Shame they broke that approach with their operating system debacles.
This cleverness is a metaphor for climate science. Worpdress bebop, Windows 8, Ubuntu 12.10, all bad ideas, and horrible implementations, but … everybody’s doing it.
The consensus can’t ever be wrong, right?
One of several reasons why I don’t use Ubuntu any more, despite it’s huge repositories. 10 years ago, my pentium 600 mhz used to work great. Why is my 3.4 ghz so much slower these days? Any more ‘improvement’, and we’ll be back to using DOS.
I agree with you 100% on this – I run three blogs (one moderately active, two minor ones) and I hit switch to classic editor as soon as I can, every post.
I may have once used this new b-b-b-editor, but not twice. I use Dashbord-Posts-Add new. What is annoying to me is that new features jump on my face without that I have made any choice.
We don’t live in perfect world yet. To me WordPress.com is still good choice after all.
The place where it’s really inconvenient is when you want to correct or change something in a published post, clicking “edit” automatically opens that stupid editor. So to do anything in a published post, you have to backtrack to the list of posts, then edit it from there. SO annoying.
more soylent green! says:
August 18, 2014 at 8:14 am
“Praise be to heaven for Classic Shell …”
__
Amen! The first thing do is enable classic then force Windows explorer to work like an actual file manager, as it did 20 years ago in 16 bit Windows 3.1. The last thing I want is for an operating system to hold my hand or try to save me from myself.
I still pine for thee my XTree Gold v3, I’ve not forgotten thy functionality and the digital mischief we shared.
My old PC died a few weeks ago. I came with Windows Media Center Edition. I had to get a new one in a hurry for reasons I won’t get into. Fortunately I was able to find one off the shelf running Windows 7 Pro and not Windows 8. Unfortunately, I can’t get it to run my two favorite old games. (Some people mess around with solitaire. I messed around with these. Not often, once or twice every few months, but I found them to be a pleasant diversion.) One was a 25 year old DOS shareware game called Seabattle. (Not to be confused with a latter commercial game of the same name.) The other was a SSI Windows 95 game called Pacific General.
For some of us all these improvements are “one step forward, two steps back”. 😎
Ubuntu runs faster in less memory, if it’s not trying to be sexy enough to give you ideas. And in Linux, it’s straightforward & normal to dispense with the Seven Veils and 3D-shimmy.
Getting rid of the Unity UI is a good start, in Ubuntu. These days, it’s typical to start with “XFCE”, as the replacement environment. As a tool, it’s better than its unmnemonic, unpronounceable name.
I like the educational applications initiative in KDE. They’re no longer new-release but that’s not a problem in Linux. This ‘battleship’ GUI is also famous for its exceptional functional detail, athletic figure, and comely smile.
But there’s an awful subversion at the heart of recent KDE. It wants to index & cross-reference everything on your machine, presumably to make things easier for Ed Snowden’s former associates. And it adds insult to injury, by sucking up all the CPU cycles in the Universe.
The key words in KDE-sin are Akonadi and Nepomuk. At least they’re proper words (and eminently searchable).
Ubuntu on my old 2001 1.25 MHz (2-gig) box is almost like floppy-booting MS-DOS 5.0 onto the hot new 486 Windows machine. Then watching DOS-dogs go Mad Max. Of course, Linux has deep history, resuscitating & hot-rodding archaic hardware.
A 2 x 4 is only 1 5/8″ x 3 1/2″ and green fwiw. Anthony, you’ll need well-dried and close-grained timber.
Anthony, have you tried summoning your blog by typing
http://xxxx.wordpress.com/wp-login.php?action=auth&redirect_to=http://xxxx.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php
into your browser’s search bar?
When I use this, it takes me directly to the ‘old’ editor page. I guess you’d substitute xxxx.wordpress.com for http://wattsupwiththat.com
I find Firefox is better with WordPress than Internet Exploder. In fact I jettisoned Windows for Zorin and haven’t stopping smiling since.
http://zorin-os.com/tour.html
a Linux distribution that ‘looks and feels’ like Windows, with none of the grief… and it’s free!
I followed the Zorin Linux link, http://zorin-os.com/tour.html, provided above by Francis Grose. It is definitely an impressive run-down; hits all the high points … and better yet has the right attitude and none of the wrong attitudes. This from a long-time Linux fan/student, and solid Ubuntu-user … who laments the nasty personality disorders that traditionally afflict(ed) the scene (to which, credit where due, Ubuntu & Mark Shuttleworth first delivered the ultimately mortal blow).
Zorin does have “Premium” versions, for sale, while the “core” distro is free. They do invite folks to pay like €9.99 for a specially-decorated super-duper copy, or for one specially-enhanced for those intending to perform business operations. Mainly though, I think their premium packages offer access to their responsive “support”. With Linux distros, this is common & legit business – and a rather good deal.
You do generally have to watch out for/peer closely at ‘free’ software projects that offer premium versions, or that ‘sell the book’, since sometimes ‘free’ versions are flawed, intentionally to herd people to a cash-product. Jus’ sayin’ … no issues evident here – nor typically with Linux OS projects.
Ok … so what does the Linux community itself think of it? Nice surprise here; I had become a comfortable Ubuntu-user, and therefore didn’t haunt the Linux-distro scene like I used to. On the leading Linux site DistroWatch, http://distrowatch.com/, Zorin is currently pegged at #9 (out of (the top) 100). That is a very high rating. Several of the top distros are actually versions of the same thing (Debian – Ubuntu – Mint), others have large established cultural, commercial or institutional bases. To be at #9 means Zorin is breathing down the neck of the very best & most-popular. ‘whoa’.
Zorin provides access to the now-legendary Debian software repository. This is nowadays a virtual prerequisite of any ‘serious’ new Linux. Recently, the repository-count has been approaching 40,000 titles. Every one of them tested, vetted and proven. Several thousand leading OSS enthusiasts actively maintain the Debian project. It is “major cred”, to be a Debian contributor.
The Debian repository is so important and so central to Linux, that these days if a software title is NOT in Debian, there must be a very good reason. Otherwise, it will usually mean that there is something not-right, and you should stay far, far away from what is probably pariah-ware (or worse).
The rise of the Debian repository – that you can surf a vast software library and safely/easily install items at will – has highlighted a traditional weakness of Linux: It lacks a ‘good’ Start Menu system, like in Windows. “Wut?!” It’s crazy, stupid, really. Very aggravating & frustrating, for a person who wants to study & compare large numbers of software programs. The Menu is basically clunky crap; relatively nice versions (KDE) are well-done ‘kludges’ (don’t look ‘behind the curtain’ – omg!).
I will be test-driving Zorin this week – focusing on their Menu-facility. Ubuntu has been veering in directions that differ from my interests & objectives, and Zorin might be a better option than the usual ‘Ubuntu-replacements’ (which is a popular & well-defined category these days).
Thanks to Francis Grose!
Well, there was finally pushback on that. (Now he’ll only be able to disrupt the Clippers.)
Anthony, you are totally correct on two counts:
1. Putting the free classic shell (classicShell.net) onto Windows 8 gets you the best of both worlds: the great features of Windows 8 (like the fast boots) and the Desktop UI of Windows 7. (Tiles are for Tablets). The millions of downloads of this great add-on should send a clear message to Redmond.
2. The change-for-the-sake-of-change has got to stop, which is particularly bad on the Web. I hope some project managers read your thread and realize that the cost of wholesale replacement in terms of bugs and re-education is staggering, and needs to be considered more carefully.
(Thanks for you blog; I read it every few days)
Yes I find it very annoying too and go into dashboard-posts-add new to write all my posts. I dont like the new beep beep boop way of creating a new post at all, and its not because I’m resistant to change… I can cotton onto improvements pretty quickly, like everyone else. And that’s the point… it’s NOT an improvement! Why fix something that isnt broken?
These have got to be the same people who keep “improving” Yahoo’s email.
Having worked in a number of corporate IT environments where “productivity” tools were dropped on us like pianos from a high rise by central planners housed in a dome of clue-lessness, forcing us to deal with / develop work-arounds for said dome of clue-lessness tools, I came to understand this approach to software development as:
Encouraging innovation by getting in your way.
A software flame war on WUWT! I love it!
Anyway, I saw a few GNU/Linux fans out there. That’s good. I run Debian.
It’s also true that a very large proportion of the young ‘tech’ crowd are simultaneously liberal left wing and CAGW proponents AND freeium open source advocates – as opposed to FOSS [free and open source] – who favor small screen touch devices to real computers as well as everything ‘easier’ and shiny new rather than decently written and working software. It’s a rather strange set of belief systems strung together. I have several of these individuals as friends, and it’s very frustrating. In their world, CAGW isn’t about ‘the facts.’ It’s about the good feeling of doing something for ‘mother nature.’ It’s about post normal science. And most of them are full believers in CAGW and that science is too exclusive and needs to stop telling them what to do… Very hard to convince someone like that about the insanity of the climate alarmism nonsense.
Re Zorin: Will it run on Macs? (Intel Macs, I assume.)
/Mr Lynn
I pay for wordpress.com – doesn’t give me control. (Isn’t it more the other way round, if you run your own install, you have control? Wish I had the time).
L. E. Joiner asked @August 24, 2014 at 7:27 pm;
Zorin is a mainstream, ordinary Linux, and ‘linux on mac’ is a common Linux-community topic and rich search-term. I think it’s a normal thing/expectation to run the Linux OS on Mac/Apple computers. Hope it goes good for you! – Ted
Beta Blocker: the problem with Windows XP is security – v 7 is better, v8 has a very good feature added, and XP cannot run more security versions of MSIE.