Back in November I published a blog post "Where is the search?" in which I stated that the search button should be at the top right hand corner of your web site because "everyone else puts it there so that's where your user expects to look."
According to a recent survey of the Top 100 blogs at Technorati by Smashing Magazine 62% of sites have the search box in the top right corner of the site, just like here, with the majority of the rest placing it at the top of the right hand sidebar.
Today I found another reason.
There is currently a discussion on slashdot titled "Open Source Usability — Joomla! Vs. WordPress". In the article the author asks if either of these are better that the other for usability.
Unfortunately it has degenerated into the typical argument on slashdot, "my software is better than your software" with a smattering of people who once tried the software in the dim and distant past pronouncing judgement as if they are the ultimate authority.
Wow - its been a year since the last release of Joomla 1.0!
Whilst all new development has taken place in the 1.5 and soon to be released 1.6, Joomla 1.0 is officially still a "live release" for a few more months now.
So what does this mean?
Well to me at least it means that the joomla 1.0 codebase is rock solid with no known security issues for 365 days.
There aren't many open source content management systems, or any open source software projects, that can say that.
Or are there?
I don't know why but in the last few weeks I have seen a growing number of extension developers write code like this.
if (!is_dir($dstdir)) {
mkdir($dstdir);
chmod($dstdir, 0777);
}
It is hard enough educating users not to do this without extension developers doing it for them.
There is no need ever to chmod 777 anything!!
It is time to say thank you to the uncredited photographers who provided all the images included in joomla (and mambo before that).
I've been thinking for a while that I really should say thank you to these photographers who never recieved any credit for their work.
On Sunday Jan 25 at 02:22:29 Rob Schley ended an era and removed the images from images/stories for Joomla 1.6 and Steve Burge listed these images in his Top ten things to explain to joomla learners.
Almost exactly one year ago I started work redesigning a large, complex and very un-friendly joomla 1.0 web site.
The site had been built in a rush and had grown rapidly with thousands of pages and a very poor navigational structure.
Users were regularly complaining that they could not find important information even though we knew it was there.
As a source of information it faired badly and the general impression was that it was disorganised and unprofessional and not a good representation of the organisation.
Joomla is great but I bet everyone has their own set of extensions that they always install on a site, I know I do.
This will either mean that you have to spend extra time installing them before you can get started on the real work or that you have built your own custom joomla install.
I've built several of them myself in the past and they must have saved me tens of hours.
It's relatively easy to do it but is in itself time consuming and of course you have to ensure that you keep all of the constituent parts up to date.
No I haven't gone mad and got my calendar wrong I really am talking about Easter Eggs. But not the nice chocolate type we get here in the UK or the painted bird eggs more common in the USA.
Instead I'm talking about the hidden, often undocumented, commands buried inside software, dvd and even web sites.
Usually they are just an exercise in a talented programmer having a joke at their boss, but sometimes they can provide extra and useful functions.
And sometimes they strip a joomla designer naked!!
On January 22nd 2008 Joomla! 1.5 was first released to the world. It's hard to believe that joomla is now one year old.
It was a long time coming but for me at least the wait was worthwhile. Without the flexibility and power of 1.5 I would never have been able to produce complex sites like www.reformjudaism.org.uk and www.mitzvahday.org.uk or this blog.
