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#157088

Hung and Joomlart framework coders,

Your contribution is very well appreciated and respected. Yes, there is a “but” in this.

I am a 30-year Tai Chi teacher, professional social worker w/ emphasis on social development, life coach, motivational speaker, CIO of a national nonprofit organization, webmaster for a dozen sites, board member of four major nonprofits, public official and president of GreenCampaigns.com.

In working with organizations that require transition, a considerable and sometimes excessive amount of stress results sometimes changing the culture of the organization and its staff for a long period of time.

Transition => Change => Stress

What I am trying to say is that the presentation and sudden launch to the T3 framework and your specific UI is causing quite a stir in the template development community. For any business promoting a new product this could be catastrophic especially when it is a major technological shift. The transition from a standard cellphone to a smartphone is enough to cause a good amount of stress in most people.

Launching highly technical products before the target audience is either ready or the technology has ramped up their education to a certain level of understanding can cause the product adoption by consumers (paying or not) to fail catastrophically. I have seem many companies go down in flames because they overshot their target audience and the target audience rejected the product. Several testimonials on this forum have demonstrated this potential that you must address immediately in order not to lose market share.

I remember content management systems being introduced in the mid-1990’s and then being rejected as too complex when people were just beginning to get used to manual coding of HTML webpages. There was also the complaint that CMSs of the time did not offer enough flexibility, were too standard in templating, etc. Seems we have come full circle on this notion (and to me as a developer quite a huge waste of time) but that is human nature.

With this new framework there is a complete paradigm shift not only in functionality but in developers’ actual logical thinking. To come from a UI in where CSS access has always been very available and easy to it disappearing and not recommended for access leaves one feeling the rug has been pulled out from under them especially when there is a sweeping change for all the templates we use and continue to purchase. While I can see that you spent considerable time on putting documentation together and quite commendable effort, I could go on with other aspects.

I would highly suggest that you produce a face-to-face video that is on a landing page before entering the world of T3 that autostarts that introduces the world to Joomlart and this fantastic new technology, explaining how it will change for templating for the better, what the future holds, why we need to make this leap and a complete comparison of what/how we know to do things now compared to what/how you envision T3 to be operated and utilized.

You are now, in fact, requiring us to follow your mold in your timeframe, so you must be very granular and sensitive to people’s grasp of understanding with this transition.

Hold on tight, keep vigil and forge ahead but do please stop your work, get out of the “garage” and really connect with your core users, customers and consumers to assure them you are here to help and not leave them in the lurch.

A little prevention goes a very long way. Take it from someone who works with the impoverished, disabled and mentally ill whom are trying to better their lives with new tools and resources they never had the chance or opportunity to use before. It’s really important to them and for us here in the Joomlart community, your work in providing us these resources are equally essential and important.

For many, it is their livelihood both as a service they sell and for others a product they use in order to survive in very, very difficult economic times.

Thank you for your indulgence and attention.

Yours truly,

Bruce Wolfe, MSW
GreenCampaigns.com, President
MarinInstitute.org, CIO

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