Now I don’t personally use the visual editor in WordPress. I like me some Textile and control. But it is in there, and I think non-tech users are better off overall because of it.
And now with WordPress 2.1, you can even switch between WYSIWYG and code views. Great!
Yeah, well it is great, but what in the hell is going on with those buttons?!
First of all, I’ve scraped everything I don’t use off of the edit page, so that’s why it’s so ‘light’. But that’s not what you’re supposed to pay attention to. No, rather you should have a look at the two form buttons to the upper left of the content text area.
Form buttons. As ‘tabs’? Oh no you didn’t! It looks like someone does all their designing in Firefox, seeing as how they are styled to not look like buttons when viewed through the right looking glass.
Now, WordPress normally styles its buttons in a horrible manner. That’s one thing, I can deal with that. But I cannot for the life of me figure out why anyone would want to use buttons as tabs to change between WYSIWYG and code view rather than two styled links.
If code is poetry, I don’t know what that is. Someone at Automattic needs a slap on the wrists, a few hours with Mr. Zeldman and access to Safari :)
Now, as Joen so rightly pointed out, the code view was one of the things we advocated strongly while we were doing Shuttle. In fact, this is how we had thought it could look.
Luckily, I don’t really care, since I never use the visual editor anyway. But come on.
Only one possible response: WTF!?!?!?
Either the WordPress developers didn’t bother testing that feature in Safari, or they don’t care about the aesthetic of their software in a “minority” browser. Either way, it’s more evidence that WP is quickly heading down a slippery slope due to lack of direction and proper development practices.
An improved admin interface would be enough to make me move to Habari. That and integrated tagging support, no matter how good UTW is, it’s still a mess.
What’s “Safari”? :)
Developers really need to cater for OS X’s native browser. Not doing so is foolish, particularly as OS X gains ground in use.
Firefox isn’t the only browser on the planet and developers need to think outside the Mozilla box.
[quote post=“2453”]ooks like someone does all their designing in Firefox, seeing as how they are styled to not look like buttons when viewed through the right looking glass.[/quote]
or, perhaps, safari should stop being so backwards, and let designers style their buttons.
aqua does not go with everything on the web.
i can’t think of one site that the buttons look good on.
There are nasty font issues everywhere as well.
A number of the options pages change font style between input forms (in pretty much any browser) and random buttons aren’t styled within IE7.
[quote comment=“93393”]or, perhaps, safari should stop being so backwards, and let designers style their buttons.
aqua does not go with everything on the web.
i can’t think of one site that the buttons look good on.[/quote]
The next version of Safari should include buttons that can be styled. They’re already included in Web Kit.
Either way, however, that does not negate the fact that WordPress developers need to stop being lazy concerning design and semantics. Using a button in this context is completely flawed.
[quote comment=“93393”].. or, perhaps, safari should stop being so backwards, and let designers style their buttons.[/quote]
Safari buttons can be styled – although with some restrictions.
[quote comment=“93393”][quote post=“2453”]or, perhaps, safari should stop being so backwards, and let designers style their buttons.[/quote]
The reasoning for Safari’s refusal to let web designers decide how to make buttons look, is actually very valid. And once you (and I), get past the urge to style everything into submission, it makes perfect sense.
A button needs to be recognizable. It’s a stable of user interaction. If the user can’t recognize a button for being a button, everything falls apart. So Safari has made the choice of always showing a button for what it is.
And as the above screenshots show, the flip side of this is that people shouldn’t be using buttons for all kinds of weirdness, that’s not what they were made to do.
As for how aqua looks, opinions might differ, but I don’t think there can be much discussion that Firefox’s widgets are absolutely horrible in comparison.
there’s just something wrong with the visual editor, like posting imgs or links, that javascripted window doesn’t have an “ok” button… argh.
Before this goes too far, I should note that the rich text editor and the tab-switching are disabled for Safari, so the only way you’d ever see those funky “one size fits Aqua” buttons is if you modified WordPress to show them, or if you’ve modified Safari to masquerade as something else, or if you’re not actually using Safari (Webkit, perhaps? :-) ).
Once TinyMCE officially supports Safari (as I heard it, several of the things holding that up were waiting on Apple to implement them), we can make it look nice for Safari users. But until then, no use making look pretty something they can’t even see.
The good news for Safari users (I usually have Safari and FF always open), is that the browser recently got the JS functionality needed to support the non-rich-text editor’s Quicktags, so as of 2.0.7 and 2.1, you can use those.
Off topic aside to Michael: I officially released Subscribe to Comments 2.1, which you should upgrade to
While it’s a good point Mark (and I wonder why I can use the Visual editor in Safari on my machine. It was Safari, not Webkit…), but the semantic issue remains though.
And yes, I did download the StC, and I just uploaded it. Thanks!
Agreed on the semantic issue… no idea why buttons were used. You should be able to do the same thing (and more reliably — e.g. Safari) using
display:block;on an<a />Strange about your Safari. You sure your User Agent wasn’t modified by a plugin or something?
Not that I know of. But it might be a plugin that’s done something odd.
[quote post=“2453”]once you (and I), get past the urge to style everything into submission[/quote]
that’s definately something i fall prey to. but when you design anything that’s not white, the buttons look awful in a way that nothing else does. i don’t style buttons anymore because:
a) i can’t in safari
b) they look decent in everything else.
interaction on a webpage is not the same as interaction in an operating system. a website has to be internally consistant, not externally. apple can’t force affordance by making us use their buttons. they just look out of place, they don’t make the page make sense.
but yes, like mark said. the tabs should be redone as something other than buttons.
what’s the exact markup of those buttons? input type=“button”? button element?
you’re outraged about the “semantics” of this choice…however, push buttons have no defined semantics http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/forms.html#push-button
it’s no more of a bastardisation then using a link to switch between the two modes.
Why tabs when it should be just a single toggle between? :)
Dojo have a WYSIWYG editor that works in Safari.
But more relevant, I was sure I read somewhere that the buttons could be styled… mmm yeah I think in the new version of webkit you can now style buttons and other input fields. OS X even puts a glossy sheen over everything :).
Is there any way we can download shuttle?
No, I don’t think there is any proper implementation out there.