Usability as a selling point... it warms my heart.
By Eddie_Lopez. Wednesday, 1. August 2007, 02:47:30
I was looking at this content management software Plone CMS tonight and saw something that made me grin...Of the four "marketing points" on the homepage, one is the following:
Have we reached the point where a usability stamp of approval (of some sort) is a marketable item? Nobody wants to say "now easier to use!" -but the mention that the experts have made the product easy and productive to work with turns a few heads. Granted, I'm probably an exception considering I took the time to start up this site and all, but if I see that usability considerations were made upfront, I'm more apt to try the software out. Some times you can intuit it from the company that put its out, but when picking from the cavalcade of CMS software out there, it's an attention grabber for (at least) me.
I'd love to see this catch on with software- I've thought many times how nice it would be to have a website of "usable reviews" where usability experts review software & products and provide opinions. I think we all make due by just checking our favorite writers and taking recommendations as we come across them, but it would be nice to have some kind of "usability rating" assigned to products (for instance: The UPA give this 3 out of 4 "Donald Norman Teapots")
*For what it's worth, I haven't installed Plone and I'm not sure how usable it is, I just thought it was interesting that usability is getting front page attention.
hm.. I had a look at this website, and the first thing I noticed is it's hard to find out what this product is actually good for.
(yes this is somehow off-topic, your post was not about the website usability)
The first things this website tells me is "Plone conference" and "Batteries Included". Hä? Maybe it's some kind of hardware that needs batteries? Oh cool, it's "easy to get started" and "easy to use".
This explanation is not really convincing .. what is "my content" ?
Yes, for those who know what a content management system is, it makes some sense. Wikipedia:
Hmm, this vital piece of information should be somewhere on the Plone Website...
And wow, "What is a CMS?", there is an explanation! But if you have no clue about the abbreviation, you will likely skip this link.
So, finished with my preachment!
[/crude and off-topic]
By Schneemann, # 1. August 2007, 13:30:54
Inside info: Alexander got bored waiting for me and Trond in our office back in the Opera 7 days and ended up fixing and cleaning some CSS we eventually shipped with the product
By borg, # 31. October 2007, 15:27:05
I made a local install of plone, and it was really easy! It ships with a built-in server, so no need to mess with mysql yourself.
Small drawbacks:
- I can't use my normal server software (wamp with tikiwiki, wordpress, etc, which i have installed mainly to play with and explore) at the same time on port 80. On the positive side, it does not cause any serious conflicts. Switch off plone, switch on wamp -> no problem.
- It does not create a tray icon -> no indication that it's running!
For the system itself, I still need to explore...
By Schneemann, # 22. November 2007, 23:35:57