Byrne Tony Byrne

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Sitecore's new UI: We've seen this before...

29-May-2008

Tags: Web Content and Experience Management, Implementation, Marketplace at Large, Selecting Technology, Sitecore

Sitecore is a very active Web CMS vendor with a tendency to adopt new technologies and techniques in advance of the rest of the market. As Web CMS Report readers know, in the past this has presented both advantages and problems for their customers.

One area where Sitecore has traditionally invested a lot of energy is their user interface. Or, I should say, user interfaces, since there are several different ones. With each new release, the interfaces get slicker, and more powerful, and they demo better to prospective licensees, but customers tell us in actual usage they can quickly get confusing, heavy, and a training burden for all but power users. We've noted repeatedly: slick doth not equal usable (though it might help you become a "cool vendor").

So please indulge my skepticism about the latest Sitecore product release, featuring -- almost inevitably -- a "Visually Stunning Interface and Effortless Control." To be fair, I haven't seen the new version yet. Maybe lightning will strike and I'll join the hordes who have "heralded [Sitecore] as having a gorgeous look and feel with an intuition that has no parallel in the industry."

But at the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I think; intuition is always very personal. True usability is fitness to purpose. Understand your colleagues' purposes, then very carefully test any interface under real conditions.

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