Imagine this:

A client comes to you and says they want you to develop a web application. They show you a list of requirements, and in it there are a lot of options for the end user to customize the look and other front-end functionality of the app.

Then they tell you that they want some of these visual options to be managed in a real-time updating interface, that shows a preview of the site, and some to be managed in an interface with no visual feedback at all.

I don’t know about you, but I’d tell them that having two interfaces for controlling the presentation layer of their app is going to create a confusing user experience and that they needed to choose one or the other. My personal vote would be for the one with the real time feedback.

Change Requires Perspective

“Automatic updates in WordPress are going to destroy everything.” – The ghost of #wpdrama past

As WordPress users, or as someone whose job it is to deliver and maintain client sites using WordPress, change often sucks. But on a project as large as WordPress, change can’t be viewed from the level of the site, but requires a more global perspective.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a core developer. I do think that maintaining plugins, that I am an active user of, but I also have to think of the thousands of other users, or in the case of Pods, tens of thousands of users, gives me some perspective.

Since the Customizer was added in WordPress 3.4 (release date June 13, 2012) WordPress has had two different interfaces for visual options, and like the theoretical app I discussed above, that’s just bad UX.

 

I Demand Real Time Visual Feedback!

“Been working on it for three years dude.” – WordPress

Over time the Customizer, along with the new theme navigation system, has slowly absorbed more of the old system. And that’s good. I look forward to the day when the Customizer has consumed all visual options on my site, just like I look forward to when Lasso can fully replace the back-end post editor, which it is very close to doing.

I currently do almost all of my post editing for this site, from the front-end and it is wonderful. No more false promises of WYSIWYG. I’m actually seeing what I get.

As a user of WordPress, it’s what I should expect, from post editing, or any other visual changes on my site. I want to edit and preview it in context, not in the abstract.

The WordPress admin started out as a traditional PHP application, but every update replaces more and more of the old way with a modern, AJAX-driven web app. That’s awesome.

Could every single part of it be improved? Of course, software is never done.

I’d say the Customizer is the future, and if you don’t like some part of it, now is the time to propose and create improvements, but the customizer has been the norm for three years now.

Not that its age should stop you from respectfully suggesting improvements  to it.

I personally look forward to what new capabilities that the Customizer will acquire in future versions. In addition, I’d love to see more plugin developers (points finger at self) make use of the Customizer in innovative, and user-friendly ways like Conductor does.