[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #12586: Lighten up the admin header and footer

[WordPress Trac]

#12586: Lighten up the admin header and footer
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 Reporter:  jane            |       Owner:                   
     Type:  task (blessed)  |      Status:  new              
 Priority:  normal          |   Milestone:  3.0              
Component:  UI              |     Version:                   
 Severity:  normal          |    Keywords:  header, has-patch
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Comment(by jane):

 Everyone is right, sort of.

 The UI group chose the light header based on the mockups of the three, and
 there was a lot of design-specific discussion around it that I don't think
 belongs on Trac. As has been suggested, we have a UI blog and a UI chat
 now, ostensibly so that development tickets can focus more on
 implementation and code than on picayune aesthetic details, and so
 designers can guide design decisions rather than them being made only by
 developers. The newly contributing designers who have worked on stuff like
 this should be appreciated. They're not trying to take something away,
 they're trying to contribute their professional expertise. People who do
 both should be involved in both.

 That said, almost every design change is an experiment. You can't tell
 from comps how something will feel when it's in use in a live application,
 and the process is basically make a decision, see how it feels, edit if
 needed.

 I also voted for the lightest header in the UI meeting, and didn't go for
 the middle one because it was a bit too dark, and picked up the nav on
 state color, which I looked weird. I've heard from a number of people who
 didn't like the light one at first, but say it has now grown on them and
 they like the lightness of it. For me, using it live has made me like it a
 bit less. The 1px white line is part of it; it makes the application feel
 unanchored to be separated from the top of the browser window by that
 line. Another part is that now the on state (for Dashboard, in all the
 mockups people are doing) is the most prominent thing on the screen, which
 I find unsettling. Either way I think we should rethink the on-state
 color; it's darker than it needs to be and looks muddy.

 Making the header gradient just slightly darker, like in
 http://simianuprising.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/darker-gradient-
 screenshot.png feels appealing in terms of providing a bit more of a
 visual anchor. I definitely do not want to go back to the super dark
 header. And the light header could still be great if we got rid of the
 white line on top and lightened/changed the on state for the nav. I'm
 comfortable trying either direction as a next step.

 For the record, though, "tend to like the darker one after a minute of
 convincing" is generally a poor argument: there should be no convincing
 going on when soliciting unbiased feedback. :)

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12586#comment:36>
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