so wordpress recently released their latest version 2.5. the main changes revolved around the administration console, so i decided to install it into my development environment and check to see if it broke my hacker’s diet plugin functionality. luckily it didn’t (that I could tell), but while surfing around the new menus I had a bit of an inspirational moment. i visualized how my plugin would best fit in with their new look. i quickly sketched down my idea and got to work. it turned out to be a case study on usability.
since starting my job @ yahoo, my focus on the user has been amplified. generally speaking, i specialize in back-end development. that means that most of the code i write isn’t what you see, it’s what turns the wheels behind the scenes. but since my background is in web development, i sometimes like to brush off my CSS skills and make something that people will interact with. placing yourself in the spot of the user and asking “what’s the best way to give the user exactly what they need, but not overwhelm them?” is a great way to really flesh out your feature set. it requires bringing the important stuff to the forefront and keeping the less important things hidden until needed or even discarded altogether.
when i first made my plugin, the question driving my design was “what features do i need to have in order to replicate the diet plan?” this time around, i had more to draw from. namely: a year and a half (wow) of plugging in my weight every morning, and tons of feedback from users.
so what came out of my rethinking? as a user, i need a few important things right at my fingertips:
- putting in today’s weight
- finding out my current “real” weight
- seeing how that weight has changed recently so i can adjust if needed
and that’s really it! anything that doesn’t fall within those 3 items has been de-emphasized. the other features still exist, but there is no reason to have any of that stuff on the main plugin page, “above the fold”. (which means stuff you see without scrolling down) how often do you really go back and add/change a weight for a previous day? once a month, maybe? so why clutter the page with all that old stuff when what you really want is today’s information.
and of course i gave the UI a little polish. i switched out the graph to use YUI charts so that gd is no longer required and so the charts are much more interactive. round corners are still in, right? :]
look for an update “soon”. (1-2 week timeframe)
]]>I know what you’re thinking, “7? What happened to 5 and 6?” Yeah I submitted a few inconsequential updates to the SVN repository that weren’t worth mentioning. But this one is, since it is a security release.
Hopefully in the near future I’ll put in the historical weight editing and hit 1.0. Then I’ll be able to concentrate on polish and shine (aka public facing pages and widgets)
As for me? I hit the 2.5 lb boundary above my goal, so I’m back on it! This thing sure keeps me honest. :]
]]>The real reason for this release is due to the new Plugin Directory on wordpress.org. From now on my plugin will be available for download from the SVN repository there.
]]>hackersdiet_0.9.3b.zip Current version: Download from Wordpress.org Plugin Repository
hackersdiet_0.9.2b.zip Current version: Download from Wordpress.org Plugin Repository
I only have MySQL 4.1 to test on, so let me know if there are still problems.
hackersdiet_0.9.1b.zip Current version: Download from Wordpress.org Plugin Repository
What is it?
The Hacker’s Diet is a plugin which you can use to input your weight everyday for calculating and tracking your weight trend based off the guidance and formulas used in the book, The Hacker’s Diet by John Walker.
Why did I write this?
So last August I noticed something. That “something” was that I couldn’t button my pants because my gut was too big. So I was faced with a decision: either buy new pants or lose weight. Now that I think about it, I guess this all started due to the fact that I hate shopping! Either way, I began to look into weight loss systems. I thought things like Atkin’s and South Beach were just gimmicks, so I dug deeper. Then I found The Hacker’s Diet, written by the founder of Autodesk (creator of AutoCAD). It was written by a nerd, for nerds, and it really inspired me. The first paragraghs of his book sum up the whole concept of weight loss very succinctly.
There’s an old Wall Street tale: a tyro asks an old-timer, “How do you make money in the market.” The wise man answers, “Nothing could be simpler: buy low, sell high.” The beginner asks, “How can I learn to do that?” The sage responds, “Ahhhh…that takes a lifetime.” Simple doesn’t mean easy.
There is no magic secret to losing weight and keeping it off, just as there is no hidden key to instant wealth. Nonetheless, every year another crop of “magic diet” and “secrets of investing” books appear on already-creaking shelves. The human capacity to ignore inconvenient facts and avoid unpleasantness is immense. Success in any endeavour requires coming to terms with the true nature of the task at hand and, if the goal is worth the effort, getting on with it.
“How can I lose weight?” “Simple, eat less food than your body burns.” “How can I learn to do that?” Read this book.
There was one problem, to me, with his system. Since it was originally written in 1991, you had two choices for tracking your progress: pen and paper (what is this, the stone age?) and Excel spreadsheets. I found the spreadsheets extremely lacking, and I thought to myself “Man, I wish there was a cooler web-based version of this.” And with that, this plugin was born.
The plugin
This plugin serves one primary purpose: to replace the original spreadsheet’s functionality while increasing usability. Here is the current (simple) feature list:
- Dashboard integration
- Flickr-style “edit in place” daily weight entry
- Weight trend calculation
- Reporting (weight vs. trend vs. goal)
- Reads custom RSS feed for notifications of plugin updates
I have been personally using this plugin in my WordPress install for the past 5 months, and I have decided to publically release it the same day that I hit my weight goal. (Go me!) The development process has been very iterative. I first wrote the bare minimum needed to replace the weight logging part of the system’s spreadsheets, and then over the past 5 months have added features to either recreate functionality of the original spreadsheets, or add cool stuff as I saw fit. :)
But to be honest, I really haven’t touched the code in about 3 months since it was stable and did everything I needed. Recently I’ve worked on some things that were on my “todo” list, and I now feel that the plugin is ready for public use.
Download
hackersdiet_0.9b.zip Current version: Download from Wordpress.org Plugin Repository
Screens:
Enjoy!
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