Last week, we finished our 10th milestone release of Nooku, the new translation manager for Joomla! 1.5. Just like with the prevoius releases, some of our partners are already using Nooku on their production sites. More on that soon on our Buzz page. This gives us the necessary feedback about 'real world usage' to make Nooku even better. There are still a couple of features we want to implement before we feel we are ready to release a beta version to a wider group of people, so you'll have to be a little more patient (or consider signing up to be a Nooku partner yourself and help us fund development!).
Ease of use
One of the features we've been working on is ease of use. We feel that managing a multilingual site shouldn't be any harder than managing a plain Joomla! site. First and foremost, we try to introduce as few technical terms as possible. As a developer, you're used to all kinds of concepts that are like Chinese to someone without a background in IT. Of course you need some terms, but whenever possible we try to limit them to words people are already familiar with from Joomla! and other software.
Making choices
Someone I demo'd Nooku to, remarked that 'it has so few features'. But options are not features. Half the time, when an application presents a user with a choice, you need a page of documentation to explain what that option does, and how it will affect your site. Five screens of configuration options might appear to give you a lot of control. In reality, only people who work with the software a lot (or who simply have too much time on their hands), will be able to use all those options.
Joomla! 1.5 already sets a good example on how to deal with this problem. By separating options into a Basic section and a hidden Advanced section, users know they don't need to worry about every single option. The advanced options have their recommended setting, and you only have to touch them if you want to achieve something special.
Getting rid of options
Nooku goes one step further. Whenever a choice needs to be made, we ask ourselves: 'Is this something the user has to decide?' Most of the time, the system has all the information it needs. So if the system is intelligent and analyzes its environment, it can make a better informed decision than an average user could. We're not compromising the power of the system: the choice is made dynamically, but by the system instead of the user. This is what the configuration screen currently looks like in Nooku:
