WordPress 2.7 and Crazyhorse

Last weekend I spent a few days away from WordPress and work in general to spend some quality time with the girlfriend. When I got back and updated my local copy of WordPress (via svn) I was surprised to see that they had started to incorporate all of the user testing information feedback they had received at the test camps earlier this year.

I am really pleased to see the changes as they are moving WordPress in a very positive direction. I was never particularly bothered by the WordPress 2.5 admin update. It looked a lot nicer that the old version but there were a number of changes I disagreed with. However, I am very pleased to say, the new version is working much better.

Below are screenshots of the new Dashboard (only added today) and the new Write Post page, click for a bigger image.

A few of the things I found interesting that you can’t necessarily tell from the screenshots.

• There is now an Inbox on the dashboard (and also in the utilities menu). This seems to be a combination of WordPress announcements, comments, trackbacks, and whatever else the clever folks at Automattic can think of.
• The Quick Press box on the Dashboard, for fast posting, is a nice touch
• The “widgets” on the write post page can be dragged around again – however you can’t see that they can be dragged from the wide column to the small one, so you can lay things out exactly as you want.
• The “widgets” on the write post page can also be shown and hidden on a per widget basis – so things will be exactly as you want
• A help link in the main menu. Currently it does nothing but in the future… who knows?
• Categories (and Link Categories) have been shifted into the “Utilities” menu..?

Changes…#

I realise we’re a long way from a 2.7 release and that lots of things will change but I have a few comments on how I would alter things (hopefully for the better)

• I would make the “Write New Post” button a different colour (green?) to make it stand out more, and I would add a “Write New Page” button/ link, which would make things easier for people who use WordPress as a CMS – which seems to be a growing audience.
• I would knock the sub menu text size down a notch and increase the width of the sub menu column ever so slightly to help out the links that have long names.
• Display post & page id and category ids somewhere on the manage post/ page/ category pages. They’re used a lot in plugins and themes so it would be useful to be able to see them

It’s a massive improvement on what went before it, and will make my admin tweaks plugin redundant, which is great!