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Other WordPress 3.3 features include a new toolbar, menus that allow users to hover the cursor over them from navigation help, and a Tumblr importer. WordPress 3.3, or “Sonny,” named after jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, is available right now.

Sonny Stitt

That all sounds good, but as anyone who has ever used WordPress knows, user interface updates can often be more trouble than they’re worth. What would be really nice is a WordPress that always works the first time, bug-free, without any of the formatting problems that have plagued past versions of the software.

WordPress has logged over 65 million downloads since launching its 3.0 version, and 14 million since the launch of WordPress 3.2 in July 2011. And while the software has always been popular, the launch of 3.2, or “Gershwin,” named after jazz songwriter/pianist George Gershwin, was wildly so. Over 330, 000 downloads of “Gershwin” occurred within the first 24 hours.

George Gershwin

Developers believed that the renewed interest in the “Gershwin” version was due to the less cluttered interface, and the improved viewing mode, where the dashboard disappears into the background during composition, something the developers reportedly referred to as “zen mode.” Also, the interface became more accessible on smaller screens, for mobile use.

But while this may be true, as I said before, it also assumes that users compose posts within the software itself. Some users, namely myself, more often cut and paste text from other word processing software suites, and experience myriad formatting problems in the process, even when following the formatting guidelines in so-called “zen mode.”

Not to rain on WordPress’s shiny-new-update parade, but even a much less zen-y iteration that solved these formatting issues would make for fewer blogger headaches. And we all know that blogging is a headache-prone pursuit, even without the formatting issues.

Started in 2003, WordPress powers 22% of all new active websites, as of August 2011.

WordPress 3.3, code named Sonny after the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Stitt, released it’s final version today and everyone should have seen the yellow update notification bar by now. Upgrading is simply just by a click of the mouse and the whole process should not take more than 5 seconds. Upgrades to new versions of WordPress has come a long way indeed.

In tandem with the WordPress 3.3, make sure also to upgrade the Twenty Eleven and the Twenty Ten default WordPress Themes if you are using anyone of theme. Even if you are using a Twenty Eleven or Twenty Ten Child Theme you should always upgrade the Parent Theme to keep it compatible with the latest version.

As for Premium Themes like Catalyst or Genesis, expect to see the upgrade notification in a couple of days.

The Most Notable Change In WordPress 3.3

The most notable and pleasant change once the upgrade is completed is you will be greeted with a Welcome Page that list out all the changes in the WordPress 3.3.

After that whenever you go to any page in your WordPress Admin, there will be a pop up tooltip if there are new features included within that page. For example, if you go to your Post Editior for the first time after upgrading to WordPress 3.3, a pop-up tooltip box will appear next the the Upload/Insert icon to notify you of the media uploading feature.

New Media Uploader In WordPress 3.3

Unlike the previous version, the new media uploader has everything under one roof. Gone are all those different icons which are used to upload different kinds of media and replaced with a all-in-one icon.

The super cool thing is you can drag and drop whatever you want to upload with having to hit the upload button. Uploading time are significantly faster with this new feature.

WordPress 3.3 New Admin Bar

The WordPress 3.3 Admin Bar has been given a slight facelift with 2 minor additions. One is the comment bubble notifying you the number of comments awaiting notification and the other +New drop-down menu with links to some of the more frequently visited pages within the Admin Panel.

In all, WordPress 3.3 is a well and good update. WordPress seems to be getting better and better with each major update and thus it is no wonder to date, there have been close to 70 million downloads for the WordPress platform.

Feel blessed that the developers are keeping WordPress entirely free. If they had charged even a dollar for each download, they would have been filthy rich by now.

For Users

Experienced users will appreciate the new drag-and-drop uploader, hover menus for the navigation, the new toolbar, improved co-editing support, and the new Tumblr importer. We’ve also been thinking a ton about what the WordPress experience is like for people completely new to the software. Version 3.3 has significant improvements there with pointer tips for new features included in each update, a friendly welcome message for first-time users, and revamped help tabs throughout the interface. Finally we’ve improved the dashboard experience on the iPad and other tablets with better touch support.

For Developers

There is a ton of candy for developers as well. I’d recommend starting your exploration with the new editor API, new jQuery version, better ways to hook into the help screens, more performant post-slug-only permalinks, and of course the entire list of improvements on the Codex and in Trac.

- Source WordPress.org

The video, titled Twitter: Yours To Discover, shows off the user interface switch, which is basically a complete reboot.

The website and all apps have undergone a complete redesign: content has been moved, photos and videos will now be embedded, and each tweet is given a fuller context. Check out more details and screenshots below.

Search Engine Land live blogged the unveiling of the new redesign. Costolo and Dorsey explained that the new Twitter.com and its official apps are a “conceptual redesign”, not just a physical one. The “new Twitter is just the foundation that will enable us to innovate really quickly across all of our platforms,” says Costolo.

AllThingsD reports that “new Twitter” is supposed to be 500 percent faster than Twitter was a few months ago, but that the pair was very clear in explaining that it is not a new feature or product – just a redesign to improve content and its context.

So how does this redesign look?

Here, Twitter explains that:

“…you’ll see results reflecting your interests—based on your current location, what you follow and what’s happening in the world. As you use Twitter more, Discover gets even better at serving up more content just for you.”

Twitter has also included a “me” section, which is “your opportunity to introduce yourself to the world.” It appears to be an expanded profile, which show off favorites, lists, followers and multimedia more prominently than before. Keep your eye on this section, as you can bet brands will be extremely interested in exploring the opportunities a more robust profile offers.

The redesign will remain consistent across all of Twitter’s official apps, including Android and iPhone, so that users experience a similar interface.

Twitter has put together a page explaining all of the changes at fly.twitter.com.

As with most changes at Twitter, the new redesign will be available to a small group of users initially, and will be rolled out to everyone over the coming weeks and months.

It’s a HUGE update, at least aesthetically, but also has some new features which are worth checking out.

Twitter has put together this video showing how the new design will look and work – which is great if you don’t yet have access to the Twitter.com revamp.

]]> http://www.tresdots.net/twitter-gets-new-fresh-look/feed 0 http://www.tresdots.net/drupal-wordpress-or-joomla http://www.tresdots.net/drupal-wordpress-or-joomla#comments Thu, 10 Nov 2011 19:28:01 +0000 Mitul Gosalia http://www.tresdots.net/?p=1 For those not in the know, content management systems (CMS) are all the rage these days. In our opinion, all of the hoopla is quite justified. We have recently worked created websites in both Drupal and WordPress and after playing with all of them, we’re in love. Unless we needed some insane functionality that was only available if we developed it ourselves, most of our personal and professional website needs can be met by an open source CMS.

For example, we built this website with WordPress and it only took about two days of minimal work to get the bare bones site up running. The site looks great (in our opinion) and it’s fully functional. We haven’t finished all the content, but that certainly isn’t the fault of WordPress.

On a side note, if you are not planning on personally hosting your website, we highly recommend a webhost you will install these Internet applications for you. It takes the pain out of setup and makes it drop dead simple to keep your website up to date.

So here’s our quick take on each of the major players:

Drupal

This CMS is by far the most developer friendly. While not always recommended, you can play around with the code and tweak things to your liking. It also has the most flexibility in terms of customization. There is a strong development and support community who can pretty much answer any question that you might have. There are also plenty of free themes and modules that allow you to easily customize the look and feel of your website and add additional functionality. When we were developing one of our new sites, we found that Drupal also allowed for the greatest control over users.

The biggest down side to Drupal is that it is probably the most difficult of the three to get the hang of. Its great flexibility comes at the expense of usability. However, it does not take that long to get used to and once you get over the learning curve, it is pretty smooth sailing. It took me a good couple days of really getting into Drupal for me to begin to understand the framework and to be comfortable navigating the Drupal waters. With all that in mind, we would not use Drupal for just a blog or a podcast since it is simply overkill. Drupal is great for e-commerce, community based websites, business sites, and more comprehensive, complicated sites.

Joomla

As a disclaimer, we have had minimum exposure to Joomla, but we have played with it a bit and done some research. If Drupal is the most developer friendly, Joomla is the most user/designer friendly. Relative to Drupal, it is very easy to hit the ground running and to get a barebones site up and running in a day. It is very easy to make a great looking site and just like Drupal, it has loads of extensions to add functionality and it is supported by a great community to answer all of your questions. Joomla is very powerful, while being very easy to use.

The greatest weakness of Joomla is that it is not as flexible and powerful as Drupal. Basically, use Joomla if it will fit your needs, but there’s a good chance you might need to use Drupal. In addition, Joomla recently updated to a new version, so there are currently some compatibility issues between themes/extensions and the newer version of Joomla.

WordPress

While WordPress is certainly coming into its own as a full-fledged CMS, its niche is still blogging. Of the three, it has the best blogging functionality. In addition, many of the plugins and themes are mostly geared towards a blog. However, it does also function very well as a general informational website and home for podcasts. It has some great podcast plugins that make it dead simple to get a podcast up and running. Overall, WordPress is the easiest CMS to use and understand, mainly because its functionality is limited mostly to blogging.

The biggest downside to WordPress is its lack of flexibility. Unfortunately, the same features that make it easy to use, also limit its abilities. For example, while many people try and some do succeed; WordPress does not make a very good e-commerce site. Many people have tried, but the common wisdom is to use Joomla or Drupal. In addition, trying to play with the code of WordPress can be a dangerous game is not recommended for the faint of heart. As we get more experience with WordPress, We have found it to be the easiest to break.

Conclusion

To sum it all up, all three choices are good choices, you just have to figure out which one is right for your needs. Figure out the requirements for your site and do some research to figure out which option matches your requirements most closely. That’s going to be the key to your success. You wouldn’t want to start developing a site only to find that the CMS you chose can’t meet your needs. We hope our input helped. Please feel free to leave comments or questions.