Open Source Usability — Joomla! Vs. WordPress 240
An anonymous reader writes "PlayingWithWire profiles two open source tools for Web development, comparing Joomla! and WordPress through the lens of usability. The article has apparently upset a few people at the Joomla! forum, but it does bring up a good point. Many open source projects are developed by engineers for engineers — should they focus more on usability? PlayingWithWire makes a bold analogy: 'If Joomla! is Linux, then WordPress is Mac OS X. WordPress might offer only 90% of the features of Joomla!, but in most cases WordPress is both easier to use and faster to get up and running.'" The article repeatedly stresses that blogging platform WordPress and CMS harness Joomla! occupy different levels of the content hierarchy. How fair is it to twit Joomla! on usability?
Fair comparison considering the scenario (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:upset a few people? (Score:5, Interesting)
Like one of the commenters said, it is comparing apples with oranges - Wordpress is for blogging, so blogs are easier to produce. Joomla if a general CMS system, capable of more, but slightly harder to use if you just want a blog.
Re:Can you say 'Bias'? (Score:1, Interesting)
Yeah and no mention of the simple options like:
www.cmsmadesimple.org
The whole point of any software ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Software is almost always a way to do something we would otherwise be able to do, but with much more effort. In that light, usability is the whole purpose of software.
Re:not a question (Score:5, Interesting)
Errr... yes?
How can you possibly answer "no" to that question? Do you want your stuff actually being, you know, used by people? There's a reason it's called "usability" and not bumblebee.
Go read up on the arguments against the GoboLinux [wikipedia.org] filesystem structure. (These Ubuntu folks have a bunch [ubuntu.com]). There are some fairly passioned "screw the n00bs" rants out there. Does anybody honestly think that the traditional Unix filesystem heirarchy makes an ounce of sense in 2009?
Both vi and EMACS seem to have taken the "fuck the users" approach to heart. I suppose I might be of the wrong mindset to operate either application, though the developers could have at the very least taken the time to provide a decent set of documentation for their astonishingly-complex applications.
Re:Fair comparison considering the scenario (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually I will recommend SilverStripe. I just love its MVC framework. It feels right from a developer's pov.
Joomla is evil. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have administered (and currently administer) a number of sites for various clients across a wide range of publishing systems - flat html, php, various CMSes running on Linux, UNIX, and Windows servers.
I cannot find the words to convey the depth of the hatred and loathing I feel for Joomla. It embodies the worst of Open Source - as if it were written by a million angsty teenagers suffering from ADHD, with duplicated functionality across a hundred different modules, little or no sensible documentation, and the usability issues...! Most CMSes try and at least look like some thought has been given to how people in the real world will use them. Joomla feels and behaves like it was designed to be DELIBERATELY confusing, as if the author of any given module was sneering at his imaginary end user, thinking "it's perfectly obvious to ME what to do here, fuck you if you can't work it out, n00b".
Gah! Just thinking about Joomla makes me want to go and wash my hands.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Joomla is evil. (Score:1, Interesting)
It's funny how people are different. I among many solution use Joomla! very often and for me it gets the job done very quickly. I do agree that usability and ways things have to be done sometimes could be improved, but I am overall very happy with the project. One thing I hate about WP is that they have security updates every week and therefore "maintenance" is annoying in that regard. I find it strange people don't mention it actually.
Re:Different software appeals to different peopl (Score:2, Interesting)
I like linux because it gives me flexibility. You like MacOS X because it is easy to use. I like Wordpress because it is simple. You like Joomla because it is adaptable.
Fair enough, but how do you explain all the Macbooks visible at this Drupal Conference [nytimes.com]? :-)
From your link
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/02/nyregion/02open.html?ref=technology [nytimes.com]
There were people who were proud to call themselves tech geeks and a few who admitted being near-Luddites, and there was at least one person who called herself a radical technologist. They joined book publishers, librarians and computer consultants, some of whom had come from as far as Ireland and Brazil, at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University in Downtown Brooklyn on Saturday for something akin to a happening for the Internet age â" Drupal Camp.
"Radical technologists" and self proclaimed geeks all gather and socialise. All of whom are very keen to talk eloquently to the NYT and their blogs about what sort of geek they are and (I'm guessing) very few of whom would be happy coding away on their own.
Does that answer your question?
Re:Can you say 'Bias'? (Score:3, Interesting)
I figured that from the "Wordpress might only offer 90% of the features of Joomla!" quote.
Re:Different software appeals to different peopl (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not a question (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anybody honestly think that the traditional Unix filesystem heirarchy makes an ounce of sense in 2009?
Actually, yes (mostly).
Usability does not necessarily mean you have to change the system structure. You can also display it differently. For example, on the low level, OS X knows files and folders, just like every other OS. However, on the higher levels, it will display some folders as if they were applications, and allow you to interact with them as if they were a third kind of filesystem entity that does not actually exist on the lower levels (e.g. double-clicking on a normal folder opens it, double-clicking on a folder with an app inside will launch the app, even though the actual binary is in some sub-folder).
Re:not a question (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen the EMACS documentation, and would simply like to respectfully disagree.
Like EMACS itself, it's unnecessarily thorough. The text, IMO is dense, unnecessarily lengthy, and poorly formatted.
The EMACS docs read like a novel, which is great if you want to sit down for a week, and learn the guts of the program inside-and-out. Unfortunately, this is not how most software documentation is used.
Most (good) software documentation is briefly glanced at as a quick reference. To make the most of this scenario, it should be terse, adequately indexed, formatted with a decent stylesheet, and hyperlinked where appropriate. I personally feel that the PHP documentation stands out among F/OSS projects as being a particularly good reference source.
No need for backs to be up... (Score:2, Interesting)
Usability is certainly undervalued within most Open Source project teams. In fact, its generally hard to find any projects which actually have a dedicated team of members just looking at usability issues.
There's a bunch of reasons for this oversight - yes, they may be related to the core development teams of projects like Joomla coming from a pretty hardcore coding background... of course rapid development cycles don't help developers feel they have the time to themselves think about usability for too long (or better).
However, what I think is exciting is how this is all changing from a more grassroots level - as projects like Joomla grow in userbase and functional ability, more people from more diverse backgrounds are twigging onto shortcomings of the software. Those people are also more able than ever before to alter the code in sustainable ways to affect its usability.
The cited article @ http://www.playingwithwire.com/ [playingwithwire.com] pits Joomla and Wordpress together assuming that Joomla's admin side cannot be changed - from an interface standpoint. This isn't true and I think we'll see some re-workings of the Joomla administrative login become available, perhaps not from the core Joomla team though, soon.
In fact, with the aim of making using Joomla simpler, we've recently launched 'Seeding' (http://www.plantseedling.com [plantseedling.com]) - a distribution label which has released a pre-packaged and configured Joomla distro that comes loaded with a slightly simpler admin interface.
Our first release of the Seedling distribution of Joomla [plantseedling.com] wasn't aimed at redesigning the admin work-flow of Joomla but we've laid some groundwork for the next release which will see a complete re-organisation of the control panel and some admin features of Joomla! Stay tuned to our blog @ http://www.plantseedling.com/blog [plantseedling.com]
Cheers,
Qasim
(Principal @designguru.org [designguru.org])
Just the way it is and it's not going to change. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I can see it ruffling a few feathers, but it's hardly news and I can't believe anyone, contributor or user, would seriously contest it. Usability is a problem on Open Source and on Linux. There, I said it.
Linux is really an ever-evolving work in progress, and it is never "done", and never done in a way that, say, XP or PalmOS don't experience. They pause for a while and let the world catch it's breath, developing as a more holistic whole. New documentation can be written as the next point upgrade is written, and tech blogs can write support as things come up in the user's experience.
Not so with Linux. Not only does nobody want to do the job in the first place, but nobody can keep up even if they are crazy enough to want to do it. Everything is in a constant state of (mostly useful, mostly working) flux.
It's much the same for the "usability" issue. To even start exploring usability with an Open Source app is to say it's "almost done", if not "done, period". That's a state that is rare indeed. "Why work on menus when the guts need work and it will all be different in the next release and besides I have this great idea to ... " well, you get the point.
Linux really needs non-geeks to write and maintain that aspect of it, and it really needs non-geeks to say to developers, "no, that shouldn't be there, it should be here" and "if you do it that way, everyone will be confused" and so on. That kind of feedback should probably be happening in tandem with the underpinnings and code being written and rewritten.
But, there is no mechanism to pair the unsophisticated user with the code contributor and project manager, and I'm not even sure that if there was, they would still be talking to each other after a few months of collaboration. It definitely would slow things down a bit, and that alone might be enough to kill the idea with the traditional contributors.
Until then (and I'm betting on that being a word something like "never") Open Source tools will always be geeky and defiantly quirky, which leads to confusion and frustration at least some of the time. I really wish there was a way to change that, because all it really takes is that first 3 months and many people are hooked on Open Source, yes, even as an "only" desktop with no Commercial OS "safety net" to fall back on.
But it's damn hard to get over the hurdles of that first install, and although everyone loves to help, no-one wants to be a full-time free support person for your buddy. I can imagine wives of Open Source users who happily run OOo on Linux all day going out and buying a copy of Vista right after the divorce.
What choice do they really have? You can either have decent hand-holding documentation or you have intuitive software. Some dare to try for both. Some Open Source projects seem bent on having neither, and in a very real sense, it may not even be possible because Linux and Open Source never really just sits in one place to begin with.