WordPress 2.7: What I love about it

After reading Jane’s post of Favorite Thing about 2.7 Beta and trying out WordPress 2.7 beta, I’m posting some of the things I really love about the upcoming WordPress 2.7 release. For starters, the new look has gotten even better.

To simply put it in the words of Boren’s blog post — it’s sexy. I love how it looks without sacrificing on simplicity. Being sleek on the look and feel and still focusing on functionality and speed. You can now expect to see more curves on the admin user interface and less of the sharp edges. The use of gradient backgrounds also provide a lot of visual enhancements. You’d also notice a lot more “mouse-over” functionality which helps to get the user’s attention on what can be done on a particular area of the screen.

Putting the eye-candy improvements aside, the very first thing I love about the upcoming WordPress 2.7 release is the new menu system. It’s simply great! Why? Because it addresses a very important thing that bloggers would need — screen real estate.

Let’s take a look at a typical “write post” screen in WordPress 2.63:

If you’d measure the top area up to the horizontal menu, it is about 160 pixels give or take a few. That’s a lot of real estate especially if you’re working on a typical netbook with a 1024 x 600 screen. The entire “edit post” area will not even show on your netbook.

Now take a look at the upcoming WordPress 2.7 “write post” screen:

Notice the reduction on the top/header area? The new header is only about 45 pixels — about 70% reduction in used screen real estate. On a netbook, you’ll now be able to easily see the “edit post” area. Would be nice if the header could be made to autohide to really maximize the “above fold” screen area.

You’ll also notice that the menu which was previously (WordPress 2.6.3) on top is now on the left side. And this is not just a mere transfer of used screen real estate from top to side because that menu can be made to collapse as you can see in the screen shot below:

Hmmm, wonder if it’s a good idea to do it also on the right side — being able to collapse Publish, Tags, Categories … just a thought.

The other improvement I love is the new dashboard. Although I would love to be able to control as an option what the first screen would appear when I log in, the new dashboard has come a long way. Closing up those remotely updated screens is a boon in my opinion. Here’s what it looks like in WordPress 2.7 beta with the menus collapsed as icons:

The third thing I love in WordPress 2.7 is the “quick edit” feature for managing posts. It lets you edit the meta data of posts from the post list screen. It makes managing posts easier by not having to go directly to the edit post screen just to modify some things like tags or published status. Here’s how it looks:

Of course, there’s a lot more improvements. I haven’t even gone to the source code directly to check out what the changes are under the hood. I’d have to do these in the coming days to prepare my sites for the upgrade. But knowing WordPress, you can expect that simple “Three Step Upgrade” procedure that Matt and company works hard to provide.