2.7 New admin interface

The view site link will be back soon according to Ryan Boren (I believe he posted that on the wp-testers email list).

Having tried the 2.7beta, I hate the Nav UI you all rave about. Those nice little UI thingies on the left side are atrocious. The previous UI allowed the user to see plainly on words what to click on for which result at the top of the page. Now the user has to scroll down to find the desired item. Worse, the UI jumps back up the page, forcing the user to scroll down again to pick another item from the same sub-menu! Even the color scheme sucks. It is so light than it forces the user to sit closer to see what to pick, Take some clues from Apple’s UI Guidelines, and stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

If you can make elements customizable on the dashboard, then make those on the Nav UI also. Stop forcing the user to scroll.

Some seem to think the less distraction the better when writing in WP. Fine. Go all the way then – use a bare-bones text editor and paste the result into WP. Else give the rest of us an option to return to the top menu bar.

Get rid of the Post revisions Crap (yeah, I know a lot of you refuse, but there are a whole lot of us who want that option). Or at least make it useful and deletable. As it stands it is confusing. Which revision is which – time stamps are meaningless. What am I supposed to make of a non-editable screen? Select something and paste it into the current? Restore the whole when I only want one paragraph? Which old revision paragraph is different from the current?

If ya gotta do this Revision thing at least use Word’s form or something like that – at least that’s marginally useful.

What you are creating is an online word processor with a lot of bells etc. Stop trying to jam every thing together, if that’s your aim. Get back to the basics: speed, usability, and so on. WP has plenty of features already, adding more just because they are neat or cool does nothing useful for the writer.

If you only have the navigation expanded for the section you’re in, you shouldn’t have to scroll.

I’m new to these forums but a longtime WP user on client sites and I’ve gotta say, i’m astounded that i haven’t come across outrage over the new 2.7 interface. One of the things that drew me to WordPress a few years ago over other options at the time was it’s clean and simple text based interface.

With Happy Cogs interface redesign for 2.5, WP hit a design zenith for myself and my users. In my opinion it was a great refinement of the simple typographic ethos (this is ‘Word’Press after all). and really set a benchmark for Blog and CMS usability. Here we are barely 8 months later and it’s being ploughed under for a committee designed hotchpotch of desktop style interface elements which leave me – and are sure to leave all of my present clients, bewildered as to how to achieve simple tasks.

All of my screenshot and video tutorials are now useless. If i redo them, how long does 2.7 stay for until another ‘radical’ overhaul? …bit of a rant i know, but it’s a bit of a disappointment.

Interesting. I much prefer the current design. As far as interface paradigms go, I find it more intuitive than the last revision.

Of course the problem being new users may find this easier, but some old users may find it harder, having memorized the old version.

Course I could never find anything without poking around on the old version anyway.

Just installed 2.7b3 to see it for real and although I did like the design in screenshots, I dislike it IRL..
Why must the interface always be 100% wide?? I have a 24″ widescreen and I always have my windows maximized, which makes the admin interface look terrible, and the navigation is just way too narrow compared to the rest of the interface.
Will it be ‘easy’ to change the interface its design (like now with plugins)?

Yeah. I installed the Leopard “Mac” interface plug-in specifically to get rid of the WP interface and go with something more useful and easy on the eyes. I might have preferred a bit more color, but the new WP2.7 interface rocks over the old one.

Personally, I’m good with the new interface layout. It’s nothing new that a certain percentage of people do not like to change things. I think you see this same sort of thing every time a new Windows workstation version comes out. People adjust. Life goes on.

Anyway… on to issues.

I’m wondering if there is a reason why ID numbers aren’t ever displayed anywhere. I know I can hold my mouse over the link and get it there, but it seems like the kind of thing that would be displayed somewhere – especially for categories.

Well, that was pretty much it. Happy Thanksgiving!

what’s the point of the “view site” button?
I have the admin panel open in one tab in IE/Firefox/Opera and the site itself in another. Make changes in 1, click refresh in the other and “Bob’s your uncle”.

Personally, I’m getting used to the new interface and can’t say that it’s particularly worse or better than the old.

WPspider – yes not seeing ID had been a complaint. Not sure why they didn’t add that as one of the Screen Options, but the request (Trac Ticket 6315) to add IDs to the UI is still open so add a comment there if you are inclined.

The concept behind the 2.7 interface is sound, but I have to say the execution lets it down a bit. It needs a lot of polish.

The previous version was clean and well spaced, but there’s a lot of noise and unintuitive UI in 2.7b3.

Some initial observations:

• Menu typography is serifed, while everything else is sans. This looks like a mistake, rather than intentional style.
• The pale grey everywhere looks anaemic. A little colour to prioritise the current task/section would help a lot.
• The menu icons don’t actually help as visual shortcuts. I need to read the text to interpret them.

edit: just exported the latest copy from svn out of curiosity and found a good few of my points addressed! I’ve truncated my list accordingly.

These are minor things that can be quickly fixed with a plugin, modifying the css, or in later minor releases.

I would definitely rather have an early release than see admin page redone.

I agree with junap, a Sans-Seriff in the menu titles would look much better. It does need a little colour, that was something that 2.6 had to perfection, the contrasts between grey, blue and orange where something to behold, now it just looks plain.

Oh, and there is only a preview button on the post edit/publish area, there is no “View post” after you publish it.

I like the new WP interface, lets give it a chance to work!
I like the quick post section,it would be nice if you could post using SMS?