2.7 User Interface UGGH!

running Wp 2.7 and try this plugin

Fluency Admin 2 is a plugin by Dean Robinson

i bet $100 u will like it~

Here’s a novel idea for the developers, which I will repeat as long as it’s necessary:
– Use themes for the admin controls as well as the forefront.
– Add the 2.6 layout as a theme so people can customize.
– Add the admin controls to the admin theme editor. Either in the already existing theme editor or a seperate admin theme editor.

I also agree that 2.7 UI is CRAP! Before all the links I needed were clearly at the top, even the sub-directory links, or whatever. Now I have to freaking hunt and located them (as well as SCROLL) to find what I need!

Just a suggestion for flyfisher: you can rearrange elements on the screen. In fact, if you’re running at a low resolution/large font size, you might just drag and drop some boxes to get it all in one column instead of two.

Use “Screen Options” at the top of the page to hide stuff you don’t use or want to see for more space.

You can also “collapse” the left navigation menu to get some space back.

All the stuff that was so very convenient at the TOP, along with nice sub-menus, has not been completely crappi-fied by being shoved to a left column in which I need to SCROLL to find what I want… It’s also completely disorientating. It was PERFECT at the top. What you suggest does not fix that at all.

Not to mention my RSS feeds have been destroyed by 2.7… I have no idea what to do to fix it.

I Also looked for “Fluency Admin 2” as one suggested. Not on the WordPress site. But I did find the site. It still has all the stuff in the left panel. Bring back the 2.6 interface as an option. I have pure hate for 2.7 so far. Nothing beneficial has happened yet with it. only setbacks.

Don’t like the wide left menu? Minimize it by clicking the little tiny arrow icon in between the menus to make it shrink left to just the icons. Then mouseover the icons for popout menus.

No, I don’t like the left menu at all. I liked 2.6 with everything easy to see at the top, and no hunting for things.

I should mention that I think WordPress is great and all. Obviously this is something aesthetic. I should also mention I’m one of those people that get very frustrated when I nice routine is disrupted and changed drastically by something I have no control over (such as a User Interface). So I apologize for my rage here…. still… more user interface layout options would be nice (what’s currently there in the main is nice, but being able to be more customizable would be better.. as I had already mentioned, would be much better.)

But it looks like I’m just going to have to re-train and deal :/ ??

No, I don’t like the left menu at all. I liked 2.6 with everything easy to see at the top, and no hunting for things.

Most people prefer the left-side menus, because there’s no searching through tabs that way. Trying to guess which main section the sub-menu you’re looking for is under is an exercise in frustration.

more user interface layout options would be nice (what’s currently there in the main is nice, but being able to be more customizable would be better.. as I had already mentioned, would be much better.)

Many of the developers (myself included, but not *all* of them, obviously) are of the opinion that having extra options like this actually hurts usability in the long run. Especially when those options are somewhat useless.

Customizable is not necessarily better, as many, many years of user interfaces and “skinning” has proven. It leads to a disbalanced and fragmented user base, with different customized interfaces causing too many choices for the newcomer. The whole “skin” concept often leads to *less* users, not more. It also leads to the default skin being stale and not getting updated regularly, since it takes the skinning burden off the main development team. This is despite said default skin always being the first thing the newcomer sees of the application, as well as being the most common skin used for the application.

So no, I don’t agree with you on this one. “Skinning” should be considered harmful. And while it’s true that changing the interface will cause some people to be happy and some to not be, on the whole I think that this interface is much improved over the horrible UI of 2.5 and 2.6. I think that most people like it and those that don’t can get used to it fairly easily. And I think that the few things seriously wrong with it are relatively minor bits here and there, not really critical missing pieces from it.

It’s one thing to look at it as a developer’s standpoint, but I’m getting complaints from my clients who are frustrated with the new interface.

I’ve still got clients on 800×600 resolution whose sites I set up on WordPress for ease of use to allow them to do authoring and small maintenance themselves.

Having the menu on the left side makes everything seem much more cramped.

I don’t think having the ability to move the menu to the top or the left side is an unreasonable option to ask for.

I just hope that we can avoid another major UI change at the whim of the latest UI trend.

@otto42

Sorry but I disagree with you Otto.

I was neutral towards the 2.5 change in UI.

The CrazyHorse UI study perhaps justified a UI change. The problem is the best features of CrazyHorse UI which made the UI better were replaced in 2.7 by untested features. It seems like somebody thought that the CrazyHorse UI was simply better because the menu was on the left hand side.

Many of the developers (myself included, but not *all* of them, obviously) are of the opinion that having extra options like this actually hurts usability in the long run. Especially when those options are somewhat useless.

Customizable is not necessarily better, as many, many years of user interfaces and “skinning” has proven. It leads to a disbalanced and fragmented user base, with different customized interfaces causing too many choices for the newcomer.

This point you make here is contradicted by the jquery sortable UI included in 2.7. Users can now customize their admin layouts extensively with drag and drop. A multitude of plugins also have always provided further changes to the admin.

Not only can you drag and drop but you also have the ‘screen options’ which allows you to leave out or include UI blocks.

Adding the ability to drag the menu to the top for horizontal or including the ability to select that in ‘screen options’ is a relatively minor addition in functionality considering all the core to required to make that happen is already there.

Some new aspects of the UI are just plain poor.

The worst new aspect is the “Add New Post” completely replaces the “Title” label for the title field on the add new post page.

For new users there is nothing to hint what the title field is for. You just have to guess that the title goes there.

Was it really necessary to make the default grey?

The problem is the best features of CrazyHorse UI which made the UI better were replaced in 2.7 by untested features. It seems like somebody thought that the CrazyHorse UI was simply better because the menu was on the left hand side.

I wouldn’t go that far. The menu was reworked and the look was different, but the UI is functionally very similar to the CrazyHorse test.

And it’s important to remember that CrazyHorse was a TEST. Not a finished product. It was testing usability, not aesthetics. In fact, CrazyHorse was downright ugly, IMO.

This point you make here is contradicted by the jquery sortable UI included in 2.7. Users can now customize their admin layouts extensively with drag and drop. A multitude of plugins also have always provided further changes to the admin.

Rearranging and removing pieces is not the same thing as “skinning”. And plugins have always been a lot more than mere minor changes to the user interface. They also have not gotten a lot of traction, most people still use the default interface rather than install plugins to change it.

However, some elements of skinning in WordPress do exist. It’s just called color scheme. In reality, that loads a different CSS file, which can rearrange things if it really wants to do so.

Adding the ability to drag the menu to the top for horizontal or including the ability to select that in ‘screen options’ is a relatively minor addition

I really disagree with you there. It’s a relatively small change, but a huge functional difference that most people would be uncomfortable with. It also would remove the ability to select any menu from any other admin page, like it did in 2.5’s UI.

The worst new aspect is the “Add New Post” completely replaces the “Title” label for the title field on the add new post page.
For new users there is nothing to hint what the title field is for. You just have to guess that the title goes there.

That’s it? That’s the best you got? That the word “Title:” is missing on the left side of the title field is the deal breaker for you?

I’m sorry, but that is an extremely minor nitpick, at best.

Was it really necessary to make the default grey?

I like the gray. More professional looking. But I admit that I do use the blue color scheme.

It’s been said before, but these discussions come back with every change in the admin section. I believe it was with 2.5 that some quite drastic changes caused a lot of distress and now when things (in my opinion) are a lot better again, it’s distress all over again. In time I got used to the 2.5/2.6 interface, but I still think the 2.7 interface is an improvement. And for all that people don’t like, plugins will be made anyway, such as the ‘dashboard widget manager’ plugin that also I used before this was built in. It’s hard to place hundreds of thousands of users the same time, I guess we’ll have to get used to that or study a bit and design our own admins.

Someone told me about Admin Drop Down Menu plugin.

https://planetozh.com/blog/my-projects/wordpress-admin-menu-drop-down-css/

Not exactly what I desired, but it has a nice clean look, and I’m actually feeling much better about 2.7 with it on ??

I STRONGLY recommend checking it out if you hate the left panel admin tools for 2.7

@otto

That’s it? That’s the best you got? That the word “Title:” is missing on the left side of the title field is the deal breaker for you?

What’s the point in having a feedback forum if the moderators are just going to bait people Otto?

For my own situation where I regularly have new users the problem is legitimate since I have had an increase in support requests from not only experienced users but also new users.

As for your other responses we’re comparing your subjective opinions to my own.

You’re entitled to your view that the grey looks more professional but I think it just looks dreary. For as long as I can remember the UI has been some kind of blue. It seems like a radical departure from the branding and changes the overall feel of wordpress. On what basis was this decision made?

The problem is the best features of CrazyHorse UI which made the UI better were replaced in 2.7 by untested features. It seems like somebody thought that the CrazyHorse UI was simply better because the menu was on the left hand side.

I wouldn’t go that far. The menu was reworked and the look was different, but the UI is functionally very similar to the CrazyHorse test.

And it’s important to remember that CrazyHorse was a TEST. Not a finished product. It was testing usability, not aesthetics. In fact, CrazyHorse was downright ugly, IMO.

Interesting point Otto. Let’s compare it to one of your first responses on this thread.

Most people prefer the left-side menus, because there’s no searching through tabs that way.

To me this confirms my original point. Changing the menu to the left was not necessarily the most significant benefit of CrazyHorse. The most beneficial aspect of the CrazyHorse UI was to simply have a large ‘Write Post’ button in the the top left part of the UI.

This is now gone.

Instead the short cut is placed in the top right of the screen which is not a natural place for a westerners eye to view.

I reiterate that CrazyHorse UI is different and the changes made to 2.7 drastically effect some of the benefits gained with the CrazyHorse UI test.

There are three main actions for the majority of uses:

1. Write Post
2. Edit Posts
3. Moderate Comments

Having three big buttons in the top left corner for these three activities would drastically increase usability and intuitiveness for both new and experienced users.

The Icons are worthless in adding usability and in fact can inhibit it.

Having the Icons in the menu mean that there is less room for the words and therefore the fonts are smaller.

Better to have no icons, bigger fonts, and faster load times.

I find the long left hand menu a pain in my 15.4 inch laptop and even worse on a netbook. Constant scrolling.

But that’s not all.

1. In theory there may be a benefit that you can get to anything because its only 2 clicks maximum away but I for me its difficult find and see anything with the new left hand menu. The overall effect of the left hand menu is poor readability. Others have confirmed this experience.

2. Most of the items in the left hand menu are probably accessed less than 5% of the time users are in their wordpress admin. I’m talking about plugins, settings, pages etc. Why have these in the main menu when all it does is clutters the menu and makes it more difficult to see and access the main tasks?

That’s my feedback.

Meanwhile I’m starting my own Admin UI project for WordPress.