Trust, Live Preview, and Menus in the Customizer
One of the most important things in WordPress is users being able to feel confident as they make changes to their content and more generally to their sites. Being able to make non-destructive changes and preview them is an important component of building that trust. This is perhaps most noticeable in the “save and surprise” approach of the widgets admin screen – every time you add a new widget, modify its settings, or move one around, the changes are saved and appear live on your site, even if you’re not ready yet. The customizer is our framework for live previewing changes. We are committed to providing live preview for all aspects of site customization and making it usable on all devices from phones to large screens.
The customizer is the result of a tremendous amount of work over many releases. It was first introduced in 3.4. In 3.9, it received its first big updates in the form of widgets support and improved header upload and cropping. 4.0 brought panels and contextual controls. Development really started to take off in 4.1 when JS-templated customizer controls and a JS api were introduced, making possible an ecosystem of live preview compatible plugins and themes. 4.2 followed that up with two important features, theme switching and mobile support.
That brings us to today and the ongoing 4.3 development effort. Revamped navigation for the customizer is already in trunk and the nighty builds. The menu customizer feature plugin is a merge candidate for 4.3 and could land soon. These marquee features further our commitment to live preview and need all of the attention we can muster.
The customizer has come a long way, but it still lacks some features and needs time to mature. We have many improvements planned and in-progress, including transactions, partial refresh, theme installation, speedier loading, scaling to large screens, and possibly even integration with front end editing. Our live preview framework offers many possibilities.
Meanwhile, the Appearance screens will remain and will be maintained. Appearance > Menus recently received some attention in the form of a few fixes. More attention is needed and will be given. There are still differences in the flows each approach best enables, whether it’s new site/theme setup, small maintenance tasks, or dedicated content managers for heavy usage of widgets, menus, or other pieces of content that benefit from having a preview mechanism. We should gather quantifiable metrics when it comes to performance and time to completion for a given flow, as well as evaluating the less-objectively-quantifiable perceived performance. There may come a time where the worlds converge; however, that time is not now.
The feature plugin merge window is currently scheduled for June 17th. We have 8 days to get the Menu Customizer plugin ready for merge. Feature plugins must meet several criteria to be considered for inclusion in a release. To meet this criteria, the flow team has started testing and documenting flow and visuals for the menu customizer as well as the recently landed navigation changes. Merge criteria include identifying flows through the customizer, creating visual records of those flows, and creating flow comparisons of existing flow through Appearance > Menus versus flow through the customizer. This is a great and necessary way to contribute that requires no coding. All you need to do is take screenshots and publish them as a captioned gallery using the tool we’re making together, WordPress. We endeavor to be an Alan Lomax of flow, capturing and cataloging real user scenarios. Please help us capture the flows through Appearance > Menus used by you and your clients. We need this information to ensure our new interfaces are mindful and aware of how WordPress is actually used. Information on how to test and contribute visual records is available on the 4.3 development tracking page.
codezag 3:59 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
the database structure of the menus will be changed ?
is there any chnages to the menu walkers & database ?
thanks
Fabien Quatravaux 7:49 am on June 11, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
As far as I know, this menu customizer will not introduce any change visible on the front-end side : no database structure change and no change to Menu Walkers. The only issue is about plugins or themes that added features to the Appearance > Menu admin page : those features may require some work to be available in the new menu customizer.
Frankie Jarrett 4:02 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great to see that the core team is so committed to advancing the Customizer! I really believe it’s a glimpse into the future for a more JS-driven WordPress. Takes a bit of time to steer a ship of 75 million sites, but I know we’ll get there, and we’ll do it responsibly without leaving folks behind 🙂 /fives!
Shapeshifter 3 4:11 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Ryan,
A very thorough synopsis of the current plan.
Thank you!
kevinwhoffman 4:49 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Ryan, thanks for the update. The parallel development of the Menu Customizer alongside maintenance of the existing Menus screen is a good strategy moving forward until the Customizer is better proven.
I also appreciate the rationale behind the importance of live previewing in different use cases. The more guesswork we can take out of the editing process, the better.
Jon Brown 4:52 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great summery Ryan. I think the backlash against the menu customizer would have been a lot tamer if the proposal hasn’t included removing the appearance/menu page and stating that “this was the solution” for all the long un-addressed bugs in the appearance/menu page.
Personally I don’t like the UI/UX of the customizer. I think stuffing that much GUI in the side panel is a mistake and editing should happen directly “on the page”. I wouldn’t object strongly to menu editing being added to the customizer panel as on option though, especially since I can always disable it like many of the customizer controls my client base find cluttered and confusing.
Morten Rand-Hendriksen 5:14 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Ryan is a calm shore in a raging storm.
George Stephanis 6:45 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yes, behold my lord Boren, the rock, the hard place, like a wind from Texas he sweeps by blown far from his homeland in search of glory and honor, we walk… in the garden of his turbulence!
(as paraphrased from A Knight’s Tale)
Gabe Shackle 5:28 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
It’s a great addition to WordPress but the release approach has been terrible. Virtually all the opposition to the Customizer could have been avoided if it didn’t seem like everyone was being forced to use it.
Things like changing the Widgets link from the admin bar, requiring all settings being in the Customizer by the TRT, and then with this last push that included language to remove the menus admin completely from the dashboard, it’s no wonder people were fairly upset and wrote the entire system off.
If it had simply been released like this:
“Check out this great new way to manage menus and widgets.”
Rather than:
“Here is the new way to manage widgets and menus. We’re going to be removing the interface you’re familiar with because we feel this new method is better and we don’t have enough resources to maintain both.”
There would have been almost no push back at all. If the Customizer is truly as great as its developers say, let it stand on it’s own and prove it.
Helen Hou-Sandi 5:48 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Let’s take a moment to reflect on reactions being similarly imperfect in language choices and emotive content, and the very real effects that has on attracting and retaining the contributors we need to be able to maintain and improve those interfaces. Continuing to snipe at each other about tone, semantics, and hypothetical “should”s as though everything is predictable is not particularly productive.
Gabe Shackle 5:52 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I was merely offering my perspective and a possible reason for the negative reaction. No sniping intended at all.
PeterRKnight 10:22 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I thought a lot of the (unfair) reactions were coming from a lack of understanding about why these changes are happening and the way they are coming about. It’s always painful to see folks talking like there’s some kind of powertrip happening amongst some illusory ruling elite.
But I’m agreeing with Gabe here, I think better communication would have prevented some of the kneejerk reactions that can be demotivating toward the developers.
Because Gabe is right in that some people are interpreting this as tools being taken away from them, instead of being excited about a new powerful way of managing menus.
dmccan 3:26 pm on June 12, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
This post is great. It communicates and helps people to understand the thinking, planning, work, and process.
Compared to some feedback I’ve seen, the feedback to this post has mostly been positive and generally constructive. We are all human and learning along the way. It is important to encourage and acknowledge contributions as well as provide constructive feedback. In this case the constructive feedback is that more good communication, like this article, is helpful.
Weston Ruter 7:02 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Thank you for writing this, @boren.
Knut Sparhell 7:36 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
It’s already said, but again: Thank you for writing this, @boren. Record the flows of common tasks, on every kind of device.
Jose Castaneda 7:52 pm on June 9, 2015 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Great write-up! Thank you for this. 🙂