3.8 admin panel design is very bad

I’m surprised that WordPress keep putting out updates that really mess with what people are happy with. So now the latest update has this style that looks to be made for tablets or new wordpress users to make them feel more modern or something?

If they understood something very simple then we would not have these issues…

GOOD DESIGN DOES NOT NEED TO CHANGE

they had a nice interface, why fix something that is not broken is beyond me?

At least someone has tried to make a plugin but it’s sad that we have to use more plugins just to fix what the developers should not have broken.

I’m avoiding upgrading for now which is very SAD

I’m a little supprised by how many people don’t really understand why the design was overhauled. Change is never easy, and while major change is usually bumpy, it’s not necessarily destined to be bad. It’s just an evolutionary process… Demand, trial, error, revision, improvement, refinement, compromise – usually followed only by temporary success – Then you get to start all over again when the next latest and greatest advancements in personal tech finds it’s way into the consumers hands and forces another (r)evolution.

– Identify an issue, analyze aggregated data, plan a response, implement your plan, and then evaluate the results of your actions. I think that must be how growth works. I also think all feedback is good. Especially the negative (in my opinion). It just helps to speed sorting the real issues form the trivial.

I personally can’t wait for the day when the first; “OMG, I can’t log into WordPress from my smart watch!!” support topic hits the front page. Haha!! (But you can bet the day is coming)

I really like this version of WordPress so far, and I have much more than just a casual level of confidence that security, usability and community input will remain at the forefront of development concerns, just as it always has.

– Just my two cents. Thanks!

Admin menu characters are filled by black in some places on high resolution screens and are difficult to read. The font is ugly. White characters on a black background are ugly and make the UI look childish. Overall usability and aesthetics are awful compared to previous versions.

This is a version I am going to skip on multiple websites regardless of whatever security fixes it may contain. Hopefully, the developers will listen to users and revert back to the far superior previous design.

I came across this plugin which adds borders and 3D look to the 3.8 dashboard giving it a touch of wp 3.7. https://www.ads-software.com/plugins/admin-classic-borders/screenshots/

WordPress admin wasn’t in need of so cardinal change of fonts and colors. Evolution is a change of functionality. Pure repainting is not an evolution at all. If authors of this nightmare wanted to improve user experience they should change things bit by bit considering positive and negative feedback from users. But in this case they wanted to hear just praises. It is not improvement. It is not progress. It is just difference from previous look. And very ugly one. Very bad job.

And one more thing. It seems that WP developers have completely forgotten that WP is no longer ‘just for blogs’. Gazillion of complex enough sites are using WP, much more than it was when WP changed its admin design cardinally last time, when it was just popular blogging platform. WP developers just ignored a huge number of their users. They produced a “secret” plugin for handful of geek apologists and now impose their solution upon millions of users whose business sites are managed by mere office workers, without actually knowing what are their needs and concerns. Not wise at all. A worst solution of WP team for all 10 years. I have to admit it despite my sincere love to WP.

I think the worst part of this update is the font of the Admin area. Regardless of the color scheme the user chooses, the font is small, thin, and very hard to read. This is a step backwards for usability, and when unsuspecting people update their blogs, some will break down and cry. Seriously guys, this font is terrible.

[Personal comments against another forum user moderated. That’s not allowed here.]

One of the greatest advantage of WordPress – perfect design, which is now gone. Very disappointed.

…the font is small, thin, and very hard to read

For me, 3.8 made the font *larger* and with more spaces between each letter. Less content per page, while not being any easier to read.

I came over here after a forced update to 3.8 just to see if there were others who felt the same as I. My search criteria was: Does anyone else hate WordPress 3.8? So without remembering how “usable” the wordpress forums are (I haven’t been here since 2011 and was forced to reset my password)I got here. If that tells us something. I have some dim hope that it will tell the narcissism that seems to emanate out of the elite tech community these days of which I am seeing the WordPress crew a part. Updating because you have to keep protecting what has become a beloved target of hackers is one thing. That is a necessary badness it itself. But releasing updates that mess with the tool you are working with just to say: “look at me, look at me” is really the low of narcissism. I’m here to state the facts: WordPress changed the pro version to look like the .com version for a reason just like they have been doing a number of other things: to basically thin the herd of WordPress developers/designers, leaving many without a job niche. WebDesign depot and other support sites have said as much. WordPress dev community is doing what a number of people in tech are doing to each other with greater alacrity and speed: deciding who “lives” and who “dies” as to the job stack. The more they automate www.ads-software.com (which has come to mean the “pro” version of WordPress because of its advanced customization options) and the more they advertise this to the public, the more they irritate and optionalize us in this job strata. Its the very old passive/aggressive streak I’ve come to know since becoming a part of tech some 14 years ago. Look at the comments on this board, many of them legitimately angry over this and other unnecessary and work-undermining updates. Now imagine thinking yourself the “god-child” dealing with the anger over the years and realizing you have the power to hurt it back. Personally, I think that is at the root of a lot of these updates, that and the “look at what I can do” narcissism. Because lets face it, a hammer is a hammer. It doesn’t drive a nail into the wood any better on Tuesday than it did on Monday. Its a tool and a great one. It hasn’t changed basic design in the years since it was invented. That’s the way a great tool works. Its invented and you leave it the crap alone. WordPress (and a lot of other tech) are tools and the sooner the inventors “get” that they better for the rest of us who use them to build the things we want and need to build. Ah, but then *they* wouldn’t have a job to get up and come to work to, would they. Their job would be done, all except the maintenance of the thing. And you can’t hire more people to maintain, only to “innovate” for the “good” of the development cycle (or the lie they keep giving us to support this ongoing “in love with change” madness). It comes down to us or them, the actual users of the product or those who want to keep riding the tyranny of innovation to keep their jobs. That’s what this WordPress 3.8 ugliness is about. It’s about them vs us and they have decided that they win. Think of what Google has done to the dev community, Facebook, Twitter. They all use the devs who are creating the small everyday building blocks and then kick them in the teeth. They do it to those they used to get where they are. And the dev community needs to wake up to that fact. I think WordPress will find that they have backed themselves into a corner by making enemies of our job strata. Because the more they alienate us (and we leave for other platforms that don’t tyrannize) the more they will be left facing the tyranny of the DIY layman WordPress user, the one that wants the platform to just “work” at the press of their tablet, mobile, other device buttons and that is a whole other conversation.

@mereed

WordPress isn’t an organisation or a team in the sense as you put it, so I’m not sure how can there be a “them” and “us” relationship. You are a part of WordPress and your feedback does contribute towards the software, as does everyone on the www.ads-software.com forums. The WordPress software may be implemented by a large “team” of developers, as expected, but it is ran by the community that is present at www.ads-software.com.

If as you describe WordPress has separated itself from the real users, I don’t think it’s then fair to critique WordPress at the time of the update release. Although it’s expected that there will be some disagreement when any update is released, the team wouldn’t have empathised or predicted accurate DIY laymen problems in development. They’d need more laymen feedback at the time of development and so have you considered giving feedback to WordPress 3.9 https://make.www.ads-software.com/core/ ?

Facebook, Google and Twitter all are profitable businesses that cannot be analogised with WordPress(.org).

@andrew Nevins

So, do you think wordpress devs will change their mind and return old admin CP when they’ll read this and another threads on community forums? Even knowing that community (hence end users) against these changes? I doubt.

I don’t think they’ll return the new to the old admin panel, but they might consider letting people choose whether they want the new or old design ??

mereed, really.

Tone down the conspiracy/narcissism/us-vs-them rethorics a tad. Remember that a big chunk of those actually contributing to the core and ui are volunteers. They do this because they think it’s worth doing.

Then you’re actually wrong about there being no changes prior to 3.8. I’ve used wordpress since 1.x, that is since back in 2005, and it’s gone through five major design changes since then: Take a look at https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/evolution-of-wordpress/

Now in 2013 we have 3.8, which is the first really major change since 2008 in terms of general looks. I’m certainly not in love with 3.8, not yet at least, but I’d rather take a version or two that is less than ideal from my perspective than having WP freeze back in 2005.

WP is in the position of being the most used web-publishing tool there is, that means automatic updates are more or less necessary, since people don’t upgrade when they should.

Same thing with the strict php requirement. Unless someone actually pushes us devs, we’re going to stay lazy.

Of course that will break stuff, especially hacks. But for you, if you’re a serious developer, it is all to the good, since the old saying about amateurs and pros will be more valid than ever:
It is expensive to hire a professional, until you find out how expensive it will be to hire an amateur.

To name my pet peeves with 3.8:

Overlarge font in the left menu, and in a few other elements. It uses up space without actually helping me scanning the page at all. Rather the opposite, because it looks chunky and crowded.

Missing visual cues. Like the white table headers, that makes them “disappear”. Or the disabled plugins that except for the left border might as well be the enabled plugins, with the enabled being the disabled.

Brutal squarishness. Looks like the WP-version of the MS MUI, and while I applaud simplicity, this looks just unfinished. Compare to Bootstrap 3, where the idea of a flat ui combines with a certain flair and finish.

That said I’m rather unconcerned. A simple plugin can fix all those problems in one go. And there are at least two or three such plugins already.

For whatever it’s worth, I think the new look is very slick and modern. And I don’t really understand the text size issues everyone is creaming about.

Perhaps disgruntled users could share screenshots (via IMGUR since this forum doesn’t seem to allow attachments) from their computers…just to make sure there aren’t any radical rendering differences between browsers.

Design doesn’t need to be modern. It must be useful.
It’s a working tool, not a decoration.

Good design does not need to change.