[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #32678: Audit toolbar links and content

[WordPress Trac]

#32678: Audit toolbar links and content
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 Reporter:  helen                |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement          |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal               |   Milestone:  4.3
Component:  Toolbar              |     Version:
 Severity:  normal               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-patch make-flow  |     Focuses:  ui
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Comment (by celloexpressions):

 Replying to [comment:20 EmpireOfLight]:
 > Regarding my screenshot, why have appearance and customize? they’re
 basically the same thing.
 > We could use the brush we have for customize and take it out of the left
 menu. It's really weird that the site name item toggles icons between the
 gauge and the house. I never got used to that behavior, and it's hard to
 explain. They should be separate actions.
 I'm glad you brought this up, because it's worth starting to think more
 seriously about potential longer terms plans as we make admin bar tweaks
 for 4.3.

 With menus, all "Appearance" functionality is in the Customizer (note that
 Themes were added in 4.2) with the exception of theme-install and the
 theme editor. I'm planning on tackling both of those in 4.4. At that
 point, all of the appearance functionality will be in two places. Most
 likely, as things continue evolving, usage trends progress and development
 focus shifts, it will make sense to remove the currnet appearance section
 from the admin in the future. That doesn't necessarily mean that all of
 that functionality would only exist in the Customizer, for example maybe a
 menus UI is added to pages/list tables somewhere or something, but we
 would at least hide the current admin pages for users that can access the
 Customizer. I anticipate that we'll reach this point in the next year or
 two, but it's obviously hard to say at this point, and
 [https://make.wordpress.org/core/2015/06/03/feature-plugin-merge-proposal-
 menu-customizer/ people definitely have opinions] about these types of
 changes, even when proposing that we commit to at least partially doing
 them a year from now.

 At the same time, the scope for the Customizer is definitely not limited
 to "Appearance" and really, its full power is realized when themes and
 plugins use it more broadly. We currently define the Customizer as "A
 framework for live-previewing any change to WordPress." Since it could
 contain anything, we need an appropriately abstract icon. I"m definitely
 liking the one that I mentioned before and @folletto used in his latest
 designs.

 The current approach that this ticket takes addresses the short-term
 problems while also setting us up for several future improvements. The
 Customizer gets the visibility it deserves and becomes more conceptually
 separated from "Appearance", the admin becomes significantly more
 accessible from the front-end, the often-unhelpful dashboard is de-
 emphasized, etc. We also have the ability to easily upgrade the Customize
 link to do a much faster/shinier loading of the Customizer in the future
 without moving it. Notably, the add-content and edit-content links remain
 separated from the admin menu (and we skip submenus there for simplicity),
 setting us up to be able to point them to a front-end-contextual content-
 creating/editing experience if we build that in the future, without moving
 links around. This minor rearrangement should be able to last several
 years without things moving around much if at all, even as further
 adjustments are made to the features they point to.

 ----

 @folletto could you add designs for the admin with the home concept and
 also showing the admin menu, on desktop and mobile? I'm thinking that
 perhaps we should remove the "hamburger" icon and use the W to toggle the
 admin menu on mobile in the admin, for consistency with the front-end.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/32678#comment:25>
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