Acrostics — lists and songs arranged alphabetically — are of course a venerable tradition, uniting the ancient author of Psalm 119 with the youngest child learning to sing the ABC Song. One could say that the alphabet is the first & primary meme, the source behind every other, a natural fit for the blogosphere.
Better Widgets with Science!
WordPress version 2.8 was released earlier this month, and whether the developers actually read them or not, I’m glad that they seem to have implemented my suggestions for a cognitive science-based redesign for WordPress Widgets. In WordPress 2.5 Widgets: Taking the Load Off Your Mind, I argued that what a user sees on the back […]
Feedburning Learning
Feeds & email updates are all about drawing readers into a community from the margins–which is to say, they are all about learning.
WordPress 2.8 – Better Widgets?
Widget management is item #1 on the list of priorities for WordPress 2.8 development. I explored the cognitive psychology behind the widget management screen design in an earlier post, WordPress 2.5 Widgets?Taking the Load Off Your Mind. Here are the takeaway design suggestions.
Shiny new software…
Snow outside, snow on Matt’s blog, WordPress 2.7 (with a snazzy redesign and full support for child themes!), and Firefox 3.1 Beta 2. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…
Blog Day 2008–Reading, Learning, Hoping, Blogging, Being
Blog Day is a linkfest initiated by Nir Ofir in 2005, in the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to discover new blogs and expose them to the world. We all have a small number of people and sources of information with which we interact of a regular basis, and that social and informational context is part of what shapes who we are in the world. Blog Day is a chance to expand those social and informational horizons by forging new links into new networks, bridging the divides between people and communities and enlarging our own experience.
The basic rules for Blog Day ask bloggers to post about five blogs that they would like to share with the world. I’ve decided to do a little more…
WordPress 2.5 Widgets: Taking the Load Off Your Mind
WordPress, the free and open-source software that runs this site, has recently been the victim of a major upgrade. We can draw on educational psychology to help us understand where the redesign fails, and how we might do better.