The Wordpress Admin… Beautified
Mar 18th, 08 | 6 remarksUntil this morning, I didn’t think I could love WordPress any more. :) I was wrong. With the help of a few talented designers, the folks over at Automattic have done a terrific job of beautifying the admin… finally! It’s no secret users have been waiting with bated breath for UI enhancements since the last release, which was rumored to have some improvements being made to many of the panels. Of course that never came to pass. Version 2.4 was skipped entirely, and the changes were rolled into 2.5 instead.
Well, the wait was worth it! Version 2.5 is so pretty you’ll forget you might’ve been irritated about the delays. It’s truly a pleasure to work with now! I installed the release candidate on my local dev environment, and so far all the changes I see are definitely for the better. And if you’re worried about being lost once you upgrade, don’t. Everything is (more or less) in the same place, but appears in a much more streamlined fashion.
Take for example all that extraneous stuff in the Write panel sidebar that you never really use. It’s tucked neatly away beneath the actual working area now. Better visual indicators have been provided too, for the single most important functions in the panel - SAVE and Publish.
Media buttons have also been included for easier publishing of photos or video. But my favorite part, even if you don’t use the buttons… the issues with embedding video seem to be a thing of the past. If you’ve disabled the Visual editor altogether because you wanted to embed vidoes now and then without constantly switching back and forth, you’ll be happy to know embedded youtube video worked flawlessly for me (from the HTML editor tab, with the Visual editor enabled) when publishing a test post just a few moments ago.
The slightly bloated main navigation that sprawled across the page has also been regrouped into something a lot more manageable. Preference-type elements have been given their own grouping and shifted to the right for one-click access from any panel.
Digging a little deeper, you’ll notice some things removed entirely. Like the Edit link in the Manage > Posts panel. From now on, if you want to do some editing, you simply click the title of the post. The Comments panel has also been significantly worked over so it’s waaay less cluttered. Real comments are easier to spot and spam is easier to mark and toss.
Nice huh? Oh but there’s more! ;) A tag management system has been implemented this time, which shows all your tags and how many posts they’re assigned to. Of course you can also add or delete tags from this panel. It’s very simple at this point, but then tags aren’t supposed to be complicated.
Finally we come to the Dashboard. If you’ve been using the Clearskys.net plugin, you probably make good use of it. Otherwise you probably ignore it. According to Matt that’s what most users do, so the developers tried to address that.
I say tried because I still think the MyDashboard plugin does a better job as far as overviews go. Having a list of my drafts is a lot more useful to me than a count of how many I have. Who cares? I could have 10 or a million, but what are they? Granted there’s a link to see the full list, but I think they should be visible right from the Dash. The Clearskys plugin makes that happen, among other things… though I don’t know how compatible it will be with 2.5.
Overall I’d say the UI improvements are wonderful. I think you’ll find the software looks more professional, is easier to navigate and use, and is generally more pleasing to the senses (minus the Orange in the Dash, which is a color I’m not fond of).
On a final note, if you don’t like the new interface for whatever reason, you’re not without options! There’s already a new admin plugin available (developed specifically for WP 2.5) which provides a very demure, grayscale interface.
Update: I just found a glaring deficiency in the new admin… the disappearance of the ID column in the Manage panel! Not good! I shouldn’t have to go digging around phpMyAdmin to find the ID associated with a post or category. Now, if you’re patient enough, you can pick out the ID by hovering over either the name or post count and checking your status bar. But wow, are they kidding? This is bad bad bad for themers - or anyone who wants to reorder their posts in a non-standard way.
That orange bar on the dashboard? FAIL! :)
I will probably consider it an improvement overall, but the more I look at it the more little usability issues I find with it.
“that extraneous stuff in the Write panel sidebar”
You mean like categories or post slug? Nope, never used them.
“Better visual indicators have been provided too, for the single most important functions in the panel - SAVE and Publish.”
I agree 100% they are the most important functions. They found a useful way to put the permalink into the main area which opened up great page real estate to the right of it for save / publish buttons. So what are they doing in a secondary column?
“From now on, if you want to do some editing, you simply click the title of the post.”
Welcome to the Web 2.0 way of doing things where each element has multiple interactions but no explanation of what they are. How is clicking on the status in order to view the post an obvious activity? Sure, now that I know that it isn’t so bad, but these changes will up the learning curve for new users / authors.
Even the things they did well have their own quirks. Settings, plugins & users has moved to a secondary tier of navigation (good) but the sub-navigation elements (general, writing, reading, etc) when in this section are still under the main tabs and sized as if they were part of the main.
And the plugins tab? Heaven forbit you have any glare facing your monitor or the activated very light grey (#F0F0F0) will look identical to the deactivated white (#FFFFFF).
I hope that the developers seek to follow the mantra of Tony the Tiger and make this release ‘not just good, but grrrrreat’
Mar 18, 08 | 10:28 amGreat thoughts Jamie, and you certainly touched on some things I hadn’t thought of. Perhaps we’ll see a few more changes before the actual release comes out considering they’re waiting on more user feedback.
As for the second grouping of navigation, I agree the sub elements should be moved to reflect that they are separate from the main. Very good point. And yes, I think new users might be a bit confused by the lack of hints or “direction” when they want to edit posts, etc. Which is a little self-defeating…
Mar 18, 08 | 10:53 amThanks. I’ve used Wordpress since 2.0′ish for theme development and am now getting a little comfort in building my own plugins. Perhaps if the production build of 2.5 continues to have “significant usability problems” in my mind, I will entertain the notion of building a plugin to tweak it or try my hand at submitting changes to the main repository.
For those who coding php is a foreign concept, but you still enjoy the use of Wordpress in some capacity, check out the screens at the sneak peak announcement and submit your feedback to the email they provide. If we don’t give them constructive criticism, they won’t know what we do or don’t like.
Mar 18, 08 | 11:33 am[...] Design Adaptations - The WordPress Admin… Beautified [...]
Mar 18, 08 | 8:43 pmHey charity - hope things are good. 2.5 RC1 has brought a big ol’ smile to my face, I simply cannot imagine how appealing this design is and how it would be affecting our workflow in the days to come.
Regards.
Mar 26, 08 | 12:49 amI agree Ehab! Just in the past few days, it has really grown on me. I also just got done watching Matt’s screencast on the new gallery (multiple image uploader) feature and WOW. With all they’re putting into 2.5, just think what 3.0 could be like! :)
Mar 26, 08 | 1:47 pm