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themeofthecrop I really enjoyed Matt Wiebe’s piece on the Customizer. I haven’t looked under the hood enough to comment on the architecture, but I trust Nacin when he says they’ve been looking long-term and don’t see any insurmountable issues. I also think the coming improvements to the Customizer are awesome and can’t wait for them to land. Aside from the technical considerations, I worry about the customizer-for-all-the-things approach. It doesn’t matter how well-designed the Customizer is or becomes, the more that is packed into it the more complex and confusing it will be for end users. As a niche theme developer, my themes have relatively few visual options but they’re bundled with plugins that bring more complex CMS-like data structures and functionality appropriate to my niche. I like how clean the Customizer is now for my users. However, at some point in the mid-future, as the Customizer becomes the de facto place for setting up your website, I think it will really get cluttered. I’m sure the development team will iterate when this pressure arises. But I do think that at some point down the road the front-end editing group and the customizer group will need to work together to come up with a common vision for how WordPress will be administered. The live editing feature is great. But I regularly run into situations where I really can’t decide where the best place to put an option or data component is. Where will a user expect to modify this component, a Settings API page or the Customizer? What’s easier for her to use? If I have a plugin, should I be splitting my settings between a Settings page (data inputs) and Customizer sections (appearance)? I understand that with iterative development on a large-scale project, it’s not always possible to have a crystal clear long-term view. But I’d love to hear more guidance on this division of responsibilities.
themeofthecrop
I really enjoyed Matt Wiebe’s piece on the Customizer. I haven’t looked under the hood enough to comment on the architecture, but I trust Nacin when he says they’ve been looking long-term and don’t see any insurmountable issues. I also think the coming improvements to the Customizer are awesome and can’t wait for them to land.
Aside from the technical considerations, I worry about the customizer-for-all-the-things approach. It doesn’t matter how well-designed the Customizer is or becomes, the more that is packed into it the more complex and confusing it will be for end users. As a niche theme developer, my themes have relatively few visual options but they’re bundled with plugins that bring more complex CMS-like data structures and functionality appropriate to my niche. I like how clean the Customizer is now for my users. However, at some point in the mid-future, as the Customizer becomes the de facto place for setting up your website, I think it will really get cluttered.
I’m sure the development team will iterate when this pressure arises. But I do think that at some point down the road the front-end editing group and the customizer group will need to work together to come up with a common vision for how WordPress will be administered. The live editing feature is great. But I regularly run into situations where I really can’t decide where the best place to put an option or data component is. Where will a user expect to modify this component, a Settings API page or the Customizer? What’s easier for her to use? If I have a plugin, should I be splitting my settings between a Settings page (data inputs) and Customizer sections (appearance)?
I understand that with iterative development on a large-scale project, it’s not always possible to have a crystal clear long-term view. But I’d love to hear more guidance on this division of responsibilities.
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