As you might have guessed from the previous post, I’ve updated this site to the cutting edge so to speak—the WordPress 2.7 Trunk builds. And this means there’s a new Admin UI I have to contend with and so far, I like what I’m seeing. So I’d like to just touch on a few spots about the new UI and and a few new features from my side of things. In other words, a more personal view.
First of all, it ain’t finished yet. And this has been apparent here and there throughout the new Admin UI as I encountered little “not yet implemented” type of announcements while going about my daily chores. However, most of what is to become the new 2.7 release is in place so I feel comfortable not only with using the trunk builds on one of my main sites but writing about it as well. Just keep in mind that not all is written in stone yet.
Sidebar “Drop Down” Page Navigation
Okay, so the first thing that’s going to slap current WordPress users right in the face is the new page navigation changes which, just as it happens, seems to have navigated itself to the left hand side of this post or at least an image of it has. In my opinion this is a massive change for the better since I’ve always considered the current way of dragging oneself through the WP Admin UI clunky at best. For some reason I could never really warm to having to go through the old “click-wait” routine 2 to 3 times just to get from one page to another. Too many requests to my poor shared server as well just for the purpose of going from one place to another within the Admin so the new UI is a breath of fresh air.
It has a few glitches yet as far as certain plugin related Admin “top level” menu entries that no longer show up at the top of the Admin. This is caused by both a combination of the new functions of the 2.7 Admin UI itself and the simple fact that the plugins I use are currently up to date with the WP 2.6 series and not 2.7. These “quirks” basically amount to any additional entries made to the top level menus in 2.6.* (and before) are not present in 2.7 as the top level menus have changed not only in location but function as well, not the least of which is each menu item being wrapped in script that invokes the “drop-down” effect for each top level menu item.
This I can easily put up with as out of all my current plugins, the only one that adds a top level menu item is WP SuperCache in the form of a “Delete Cache” top level link. Since the plugin works in all other ways and since I can always find the equivalent function in the SuperCache settings page, this is not an inconvenience. However, this could cause a significant problem with those plugins that require top level access for one or more of their menu items if the authors don’t update their plugins accordingly before or shortly after 2.7 is releases but more on that in a later post.
It’s Fast! And without Gears enabled.
One of the things I wasn’t expecting was the Admin to be faster than the current 2.6 series but much to my happy surprise, it is indeed! Because the trunk builds of 2.7 (called 2.7-hemorrhage I believe) update to the next newest trunk build when I choose to run the new WP core auto-update function, I’ve kept Google Gears out of the picture until 2.7 is actually released. Because of this, I’m running the entire Admin UI right from my shared server rather than using Gears to cache the majority of the UI locally. And even without gears to speed things up, the new 2.7 Admin flicks from one page to another significantly faster than any previous version of WordPress I’ve used in the past including the 2.3 and 2.5 series and that’s on a bottom end 768k DSL connection. Much impressed and here’s why…
When WP 2.6 rolled around it brought an agonizingly slow Admin UI along with it that would grind it’s way from one Admin page to another until sometimes it just stopped entirely between pages like an old, beat up elevator getting stuck between floors and I’m hardly the only one who noticed this. Of course the first thing users yelled was “bloat!” “Wordpress is getting too bloated!” This favorite complaint simply doesn’t hold water since 2.7 includes a plethora of new features and functions which makes 2.7 even more “bloated” than the 2.6 series ever was and the Admin whizzes right along with no problem. So much for the bloat theory.
As far as I’m concerned, the 2.6 series’ Admin is just somewhat broken…workable, but broken nonetheless (involves problems with slow SQL queries and my server logs back this up). So 2.7 will breathe some fresh air into things as far as bringing some significant snap back into the Admin navigation.
Don’t worry, you’ll recognize it.
Since this is post is about first impressions of the Admin UI at first glance plus the fact that things aren’t finished yet and things are still missing, I’m keeping this first post understandably short. However, there’s enough of the new Admin UI there where I can reasonably assure all you everyday WordPress folks that you’ll have absolutely no problem recognizing where you are in the 2.7 Admin once you get used to the new menu system. That, plus the new speed of the Admin itself makes getting around a whole new (and easier) experience.
There’s more to come in this semi-series of this newest, somewhat radical version of WordPress (including the images I didn’t include in this post) and my blundering about the new 2.7 Admin. Stay tuned…
