[wp-testers] Re: Admin Layout

Lari Elovainio lari at kairo.fi
Wed Sep 17 14:39:11 GMT 2008


> He might have meant a mockup of how the finished design will look

Exactly.

> The next round of wireframes are being readied.  The wireframes are
> changing in response to rounds of user testing, so there really hasn't
> been a "one true design" yet.

Is there any one specific place where these things are published? That  
would be good.




Overall, I think the new layout looks very cluttered compared to the  
2.6 version.

DASHBOARD

What’s the purpose of the QuickPress box? On the dashboard you are  
one click away from the full publishing page so why would you want to  
use the crippled publishing box?

I also miss the Right Now section, bringing it back would also  
eliminate the need to have the New Post buttons in the strange places  
(the navs).

VERTICAL MENU

Oh my. I’ve really tried to learn to love the vertical menu but  
it’s hard. Most of the time it wastes a lot of space. It takes two  
clicks to get to most pages. The pages are grouped very oddly (I see  
this is about to change). I think this scales more badly than the  
horizontal. If you have all the submenus open and few new pages by  
plugins, you have to scroll just to see the whole menu, what the…?

Look at how Windows and Mac OS solve this, a horizontal menu with drop  
downs. What’s wrong with that? Just make sure there are smart top  
level parent pages under which everything can be placed.

HORIZONTAL TOP MENU

What’s the point with top left menu (My Account, My Dashboard, New  
Post, Comments, Help)? I don’t see any logic there, they seem  
randomly chosen from the vertical menu, why have two places to access  
the same pages?

ACTION DROP DOWNS
Are these necessary? Usually there are only one or two possible actions.

EDITING PAGE
There a lot of complaints here but overall I like the new features.  
For example, the ability to hide certain publishing page boxes is  
really nice. A very nice addition to this would be the ability to make  
custom post/page writing pages, especially when the hiding supports  
plugin created boxes, too.

Custom Fields require a better UI. Maybe there should be a page to  
manage the custom fields that would allow to group the fields and  
select the input method for each field, for example a set of radio  
buttons or a text field. The custom field groups would each have their  
own box on the edit page.

Lari Elovainio


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