WordPress 2.0

I upgraded to WP2.0. Alas, I can’t say that it’s a big improvement. The two things that I most notice (the WYSIWYG editor, and the ajaxy admin interface) actually, from my perspective, make the thing harder to use, rather than easier.

Creating a post is now done (by default – you can turn it off) in a WYSIWYG editor thingy. This means that when I want to add a link, rather than typing the HTML to make a link, I have to type the link text, highlight it, click the link button, and then type in the URL. While this is likely easier for folks that haven’t been writing raw HTML for 14 years (holy cow, has it really been that long?) for me, it makes it considerably slower.

And the various input blocks that used to be scattered higgelty piggelty around the form are now nicely zipped up inside collapsable blocks that can be dragged to wherever you want them. This is actually very cool, except that it hides from me the stuff that I want to fill in every time. Once again, that’s the default behavior, and can be changed, by expanding the one(s) that I need, and dragging them to the top. It remembers this.

So, after turning off the WYSIWYG editor thing, and opening up all the blocks that I always want, I’m left with … what I had before I upgraded.

And, although the press release promises hugely improved spam handling, I’m getting *way* more spam after the upgrade than I was before. Perhaps this is unrelated to the upgrade, and has merely to do with some other coincidence. I really can’t say for sure.

I’m sure that there are lots of other bug fixes and other nifty things. But I haven’t encountered any of them yet. Other folks clearly think that it’s a huge improvement.