I just had to upgrade drupal 3 times within 2 weeks(ish)? and it’s a real pain to turn on/off all contrib modules all the time as I have quite a lot of them.

Something like an ms word, excel functionality will certainly give drupal an up

Also, aside from direct editing, direct image uploading would be cool too.

The only problem is how to make it retain its old features without making it too redundant or removing it without destroying the old things drupal excels at.

I looked at Drupal when it was in the 5.x stage, implemented one site using it and then promptly gave up on it because it is just too damn hard to use. Not for myself as a developer and designer, but for end users – non-technical people that are actually responsible for writing and publishing content – in my experience, for them frankly it’s unusable.

I haven’t seen anything in 6.x that would make me change my mind.

I’ve been using Wordpress for quite a while now, and despite its limitations and pitfalls, it continues to deliver particularly in the area of usability. It’s not perfect, but I can work with it. And more importantly my users can too. I believe that Drupal could learn a lot from what the developers of WP have done. (I don’t care that this site is Wordpress, I think it’s irrelevant).

Here’s the thing with Drupal. In my short time playing with Drupal I found I could understand the code, I wrote a module or two and created a custom theme. It wasn’t the only CMS I tried out, but in a technical sense it was definitely one of the best. Like @jord, I’m a programmer and the elegance and readibility of the code was a real selling point. In fact I really wanted to like Drupal, but for various reasons I just couldn’t bring myself to like it. And I still can’t.

When I’m in the Wordpress admin I feel as if I’m managing my content. With Drupal I feel more like Drupal has my content and if I could only find some way to trick it in to doing what I want to do with it then I’d be fine.

I’m desperate for D7UX to ring the changes and turn a potentially great but flawed piece of software into the incredible product that it deserves to be. I really hope it can, and if I can help in some small way I will do. And I think they have the right approach. This is not a matter of “prettying up” the admin interface – it’s about looking at the nuts and bolts of the system and making a coherent whole.

Yes, we can find the discussion through other places than drupal org (I did). Yes, Drupal developers and existing members of the comunity are important and should be involved in the process. But IMO it is just as if not more important to get the views of non-Drupal people. No, that doesn’t mean they are “responsible for the new Drupal user experience” but it does mean that their input is a valuable part of the process.

thanks.