It’s something we’ve been waiting a while for here at Tactic Group, but yesterday it arrived. The guys over at WordPress posted a sneak peek of the new version (version 2.5), of their formidable blog engine.

Being ardent WordPress fans here (as it powers Tactical Thinking and is our recommended weblog solution), we’re very excited at this news. Since reading about the usability and interaction design work by Happy Cog I’ve been itching to see the end results.

The re-designed administration interface looks just as good as the new features sound. Features such as a customisable dashboard, built-in photo galleries and Gravatar support. To give you an idea of the emphasis on this major new release:

This isn’t just a fresh coat of paint — we’ve re-thought the look of WordPress, as well as how it’s organized so that you can forget about the software and focus on your own creative pursuits.

We’ll be giving this new version a whirl here in the next couple of days, as it’s reputedly very stable, and will post our early thoughts as we put it through its paces.

Update 26.03.2008: View a short screencast of the new WordPress in action.

A fun little link for today. The guys and girls at Netlife Research in Oslo have released this year’s Bad Usability Calendar.

For the last three years they have produced these fantastic calendars; with each month humorously illustrating a usability faux pas to avoid.

The 2008 calendar has a focus on those ‘web 2.0 for the sake of it’ annoyances and is very good. 12 new examples of how not to build your site.

It’s available as a PDF in various sizes and languages and should be on the wall of every web design office. Enjoy…

Just a quick heads-up to our readers… Our Facebook page went live at the weekend. It is a little corner of the ‘social-web’ we have reserved for discussions around our humble blog.

There we will be discussing some of the topics we cover here and other general aspects of the blog itself. We have surveys and vox-pops in the pipeline, and there’s talk of video screencasts in the future.

The group is designed to be interactive and to add another level to the Tactical Thinking experience, so get involved to make the most of it! (more…)