With the final release of Wordpress 2.5 I eagerly installed it to test it out an make sure that my plug-ins still worked with it. Touted to have a much improved administration section as well as new features I was completely shocked at the backwards thinking of the new version. Although installation was still easy enough, setting up the upgrade was absolutely horrid when dealing with widgets and the nicely designed look and feel of previous versions was replaced with hard to see colors and overall increase of white-space.
Yes my plug-ins still continued to work as designed but when it I started to add the widgets to the theme it took me 20 minutes to figure out just how to do it. It was easy enough in previous versions to drag the widget into the template column(s) as needed and save them. You had a full display of the column your template provided. Not in 2.5.
Version 2.5 takes so much more time to re-arrange widgets that was so easy in previous versions. You have a listing of all your available widgets in which you “add.” Here’s the catch though, you add them to the selected column you have chosen to display. In order to add the widget you have to select and then show the column. Confused yet? That’s why it took me a bit to figure it out.
The upper navigation is really bad. Overall it is a bit larger, including the sub-nav that takes up valuable space for other things. The choice of color for the dashboard link color (grey on black) and at such a small font size, come on I’m not color blind but it’s difficult for even me. Then the larger size fonts for main and sub nav takes up too much room. Granted the previous versions header could have been better but the color contrasts and sizes where fine.
On of my pet peeves about every Wordpress version was the “View Site” link. It never opened in a new tab or window. This really stinks for checking modifications in the admin and previewing them live. Version 2.5 is no different, get used to the back button.
The only thing I do see as a great re-design is the dashboard page. It’s actually cleaner and more organized that the previous versions. The information displayed in each of the blocks doesn’t appear to malform the others as it did in previous versions.
Over all I am highly un-impressed with 2.5 as it uglier and more difficult to use than the previous versions. While some new functionalities have been added such as media (music, thumbnails, etc) I can say that they will have any benefit. The re-design will effectively cause a new learning curve for existing users, and the poor look a deterrent to new users. I would have rather had the same look with the new features.
