There was once an architect who was asked to design a University campus. He eventually returned a plan back to the administrator's with all the buildings and green spaces laid out to the best of his abilities. But there was one key aspect missing.

"Why are there no walking paths?" the administration asked.

"I'll lay the walking paths down in one year where the grass is worn down," replied the architect.

User interface design is such an interesting area. Screwing up with make a potentially promising product into crap.

In any case, there's no surprise that I'm really focusing on UI for this site. Ideally in any website, an action should be complete with one click. Of course, this becomes rather hard with an administrator's panel like Tabulas which is loaded with features. However, there are still a lot of issues I need to work out.

Before I begin criticizing LJ and Xanga, I'm in no position as a lot of things with Tabulas still are not done. But I hope I've at least set a good foundation for UI here.

My main issue with LiveJournal has been its lack of aesthetics and lack of UI. A site should be usable from the start, not after learning how to use it. If you've used LJ, you'll know what I mean. I still cannot find half of the stuff I need to find on that site.

Xanga is also pretty annoying just due to its ... lack of navigation. Then again, there isn't much content on a per-page basis for Xanga. But having to click twice to get to my subscriptions page = annoying. Should be one-click.

Well, I've been trying to find a way to get commenting to work nicely. Although it would be preferable to do direct replies as a hierarchal tree (e.g. LJ), design limitations do not allow for this. Most designs aren't running full screen. I think when I rewrite the comments module I'll try to use color coding to somehow indicate threads.

It's a confusing matter, and I'm not sure there's a clear solution. Does anyone know one?