Call for Testing: Action Bar

Hello! I’m Andy, and I’m working on some navigation changes for WordPress.com. One of our goals is to make the navigation across all of WordPress.com more consistent, including mobile apps as well as desktop. Part of this work involves moving and expanding some of the actions from the top toolbar to a new action bar in the bottom right of your screen.

WHAT IS IT?

The action bar is a small bar that sits at the bottom of the screen that allows visitors to follow a WordPress.com blog, quick access to edit if they are the post author or blog administrator, and a few more options were added as well.

                  

What has changed:

• “Follow” moved from toolbar (top left) to action bar (bottom right).
• An “Edit” option will appear for posts you have rights to edit.
• You can customize from the front page.
• You can customize + edit from a single post.
• The “…” menu has links for theme info, shortlink, & report content.
• The bar can be expanded (icons + labels) or collapsed (icons only).
• These actions are available on mobile now too, which makes them more consistent across mobile and desktop.

WHAT TO TEST?

In order to test this feature, you need to volunteer first and then we w add you as a tester. Please comment on this post if you would like to volunteer.

Testing steps (once you have been given access):

1. Go to any WordPress.com blog and look for the action bar at the bottom right.
2. Try following and/or unfollowing several blogs using the action bar.
3. Try all of the links in the bar and its “…” menu.

We’d like to know:

• Do you think it will help more visitors follow your blog?
• What do you love about it?
• What could be better?
• Did you feel any frustration after giving it time and using it to follow a few new blogs or edit a few posts you wrote?

First, ask for access and we’ll enable your account so you can preview the new feature. After that, please write any feedback you have as a comment to this post, even multiple comments if you find different things at different times.

We are going to gather feedback about the action bar for this week and then check to see if that gives us enough feedback to go forward, so until August 14th.

Wrap Up: Theme Showcase

Thanks everyone for the great feedback on our first test done in Horizon! It has been very useful because you found bugs we were missing and we were able to fine tune a lot of bigger and smaller parts of the new theme browsing experience.

One big element that was missing from the first days of testing was incremental search, which emerged immediately as the most mentioned issue, so we added it.

We also clarified the primary action happening when you click on the thumbnail. This is something that we’ll keep improving: in the future we want to review the details and demo pages, which will make this part of the showcase even better. Your feedback here gave us a good idea about where to go next.

Smaller bits of the experience were refined as well. The scroll now is smoother, we’re reviewing the image loading part to see if we can speed it up while still keeping them as high resolution as possible, and we fixed alignments and polished transitions.

Plus… you commented with lots of good suggestions that will inform our next steps.

The first milestone of the new showcase is live. 🙂

Thanks everyone!

 

Call for Testing: Theme Showcase

Hello! I’m Davide, the design lead for the Theme Showcase, and I’m happy to announce that after lots of research and work we are launching the foundation of what’s going to be the new theme showcase.

WHAT IS IT?

The Theme Showcase is where you find, pick, and activate or buy a theme. Currently, we are focusing on creating a new foundation, so it’s going to have less features (for now!) but hopefully what’s there is going to be faster, clearer, and simpler.

What works:

• Search for a theme by name or description.
• Filter the theme list by All / Free / Premium.
• Use the Customizer to preview and activate themes.
• Activate a theme directly from the main list.
• Details and Support links in the “…” menu.

What will work soon:

• There are some smaller pieces and bugs that we are still working on, but overall they are minor. It’s great if you find them so we know how much impact they have.

WHAT TO TEST?

We’d like to know:

• Your overall impression: does it feel fast? can you find what you want, by name, by topic, by feature?
• Any bug or frustration you feel while using it.
• What filters (columns, colors, features, …) you are missing the most, i.e. your top 3.

Try the following activities:

1. Go to My Sites on Horizon, and tap “Themes” in the left sidebar.
2. Try searching for a theme you know by name (if any).
3. Try searching for a topic (or anything really) that you might use to find a theme.
4. Try to activate a theme on your site.
5. If you have multiple sites, try activating themes on both “Single Site” and “All Sites” views by switching at the top of the sidebar.

Write any feedback you have as a comment to this post, even multiple comments if you find different things at different times.

We are going to gather feedback about this specific sequence of tasks for the next 2 weeks, so until August 4th.

Introducing Horizon: a new testing site for WordPress.com

Horizon is where the makers of WordPress.com test upcoming changes and new features with the WordPress.com community.

By using the Horizon testing site, you will be testing small and big changes still under development. It is a place a where we will come together to discuss updates and features through the Horizon Feedback blog.

Please keep in mind:

• Calls for testing will happen on the Horizon Feedback blog.
• Not every new feature will be tested.
• Involvement will be on a volunteer basis.
• Be careful: things might break!
• Be patient and stay positive! We value constructive criticism when it’s made in a helpful way.

We are here to listen. The feedback we receive will be balanced with other data and insights such as stats, past experience, and WordPress.com goals.

If you use the testing site and volunteer to report your findings, it will help us, you, and millions of people worldwide.

We know we have a smart, creative, and insightful community at WordPress.com, so we’re excited to offer a more direct place for testing and look forward to you joining us to help make WordPress.com better!

Please follow the Horizon Feedback blog to stay updated.