[wp-hackers] WordPress admin imporvment suggestion

[Jeremy Clarke]

Without any offense intended to Ozh, I think that version is very
weird conceptually and literally challenging from a mousing
perspective to use. (any time you can accidentally 'fall off' the zone
you need to stay on I think you have a usability problem)

I've used the Yellow Swordfish plugins on my sites for a long time now
(i like the earlier ones better actually) and enjoyed them but dont'
give them to clients because they can also be kind of strange to use,
especially because they put the submenus under the headings as
dropdowns in a way that makes them not display at all as children of
the current page. So unlike the normal wp interface, you aren't shown
a buffet of the children of the page you are currently working on to
choose from, you have to mouse over the current page menu item to see
the dropdown just like the other menu items. This makes it harder for
people unfamiliar with the menu choices (i.e. clients) but easier for
pros who know where everything is. So it's a good plugin, but bad idea
for core.

I think an better solution would be to have the menu items display
like they currently do (children or siblings of the current page in
the submenu), but those with children have an arrow or other button
beside them, clicking the arrow shows a dropdown with that page's
children, whereas clicking the menu item  itself takes you to that
page like it currently does (if you can't imagine it, think of the
'back' button in Firefox and the arrow that lists the last X pages
rather than just going back one). This way all current behaviors are
valid and people who don't want to think about dropdowns can just
ignore them, but they are there for those who want it.

Personally, I'm still not convinced that this is completely necessary
for core. If there was a plugin that did what i describe above I would
probably be satisfied to install it on blogs that need a lot of
administration but leave it off those that will be used in a simpler
way.

That said, I would DEFINITELY use and love the dropdowns if they were
already there, and I think that most people would enjoy them once they
got used to using WordPress.

Jeremy Clarke
http://simianuprising.com