[wp-hackers] WordPress admin imporvment suggestion

[spencerp]

Jeremy Clarke wrote:
> 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.

I wholeheartedly agree with all of this. Thanks for taking the time to 
write it all out, I just didn't know how to say what I wanted to say, 
but you've covered basically everything, so thanks. =)