[wp-hackers] WP 2.7 menu sidebar

[Xavier Borderie]

Agreed with the whole "Design vs. Templates" thing: to me, "template"
is really part of the theme-development lingo ("template file" and
such), whereas "design" is what lambda users will naturally be looking
into when wanting to change their blog's look.
Don't really have an opinion on Utilities yet...


I really like the Dashboard's "Right Now" panel, listings the number
of posts, draft, comments, with direct links to their respective
sections. I hope it'll be back, it was a great addition.


I love the drag'n'drop, mostly because you can build your menu as you
wish (central section or right sidebar). Maybe the Title and Post
section could be integrated too, so that you could for instance put
Excerpt in-between them if that's how the blogger feels like (or it
that's how his previous blogware used to do).
I kinda agree with Jeremy on the huge size of the dragging zone -
which are furthermore bound the be an issue with translation : for
instance, "Media added to this post" takes the whole sidebar width
(where it resides by default), and in French it would be longer
(something like
"Média ajoutés à cet article"). I guess it would then wrap to the next
line - and thus double the title zone.
Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com/) uses regular fonts, and has the
Edit link only appear when the mouse rolls over the single item. Maybe
that would be a better solution?


The Install Plugin item's "Upload a plugin" section is hopefully one
function that I've been wanting to have in WP for for a looooong time,
ever since I saw it in the DotClear project
(http://www.dotclear.net/). This excellent French blogware defines
standard filenames that plugins- and themes-developers must use (like
_define.php which act as a sort of manifest). This way, users can
directly point DotClear to the Zip archive for the plugin or theme,
and let DC do its magic (downloading, checking, installing), without
all the hassle of doing it yourself.
Ever since I saw this in action, I thought it would be a truly great
addition to any blogware - and DotClear uses GPL2 (hint hint :) ).


Couple bugs/issues that might already  have tickets that I haven't found:
 - In Visual Editor mode, the "Visual" tab appears above the
"Show/Hide Kitchen Sink". I'm in 1024*768, so if not resolved, that's
bound to be a problem for a lot of people.
 - In the menubar, close the Content menu so that you can open both
Settings and Plugins without scrolling down. Click one of their items,
for instance Plugin Editor: the page loads and opens Content by
default, and the clicked-item's. I would have expected the menu to
keep the state I put it in: all closed except the ones I left open.
Likewise, I think you should force Content open: if the user has
closed it, don't open it on next reload.
 - Install plugin: HTTP errors are not dealt with, I got a couple
full-screen 502 errors (Bad Gateway) in my face, which could confuse
users.