I also miss the old “Distraction Free Writing” mode (or fullscreen mode), which took the visual editing area to nearly full screen height and only brought back the toolbars on demand when I hovered near the top. The current incarnation seems to do nothing other than temporarily hide the side bars until I move the mouse too far, which seems pointless.
The loss of fullscreen mode is merely annoying on a large desktop monitor. On a small netbook (1024×600 native) it makes the editor almost unusable. Between the toolbars, top bar, and sometimes lower bar, I have only 2 inches of vertical real estate in which to make edits. Even making my browser fullscreen and turning off the “kitchen sink” still leaves me with an editing area less than half the screen height. This makes it very difficult to work around photos or see entire paragraphs.
I run two personal sites on WordPress and manage about 5 professional sites on an ongoing basis. I used the original “distraction free” / fullscreen mode constantly, and have found WordPress much less functional after its loss. Please bring back this important feature!
