Does your admin look bloated?

A totally minimalistic admin area

NOTE : The chances are that none of this works in IE, so if you use IE you may as well skip the rest of this post ..... or read it and then go get a better browser ... whichever rocks your boat

So, I was playing around with the admin area to see what could be done using js, as it's required for the admin area to function anyway, and css. The main idea was to hide all of the clutter that's not used for the majority of posts, or only used briefly during the whole posting process, whilst also leaving it accessible for the moments that you do need it. When I say "clutter" I pretty much mean everything except the textarea that you type in and the post title. Toolbars - gone, advanced properties - gone, categories - gone, post status - gone, you get the picture

Hovering over the toolbars makes them visible. You can also pin them open by clicking

All of this is done from a plugin which hooks into a couple of the admin events and then unleashes a bit of javascript to play around with classnames and id's and onclick events and stuff. The rest is handled by a simple bit of css ...... so simple in fact that IE can't understand it ...... nothing new there then huh? ..... anyway, the end result is that pretty much everything in admin is collapsed or hidden until you hover over or click stuff. The toolbars will show on hover, or you can click the text to pin them open if you're going to be using them a lot for a particular post.

The whole of the right column is hidden until you need it, which allows for a much bigger posting screen

The whole of the right column is reduced to a lil tab handily marked "OPTIONS". Hovering over the tab brings the right column back so you can play with your categories, visibility and renderers and things. This allows the post textarea et el to be expanded to fill the width of the screen which, for me, makes posting far far easier ...... combine that with Afwas's plugin ( [2.4] Resize Admin Textarea plugin ) and you can pretty much fill your screen with just the post area ...... cool huh?

Finally a thanks to John for his constructive criticism and suggestions about the plugin ..... and for allowing me to scare the shit out of him when most of his admin area disappeared ..... I suppose I should have warned him first

Don't worry, it's all still there

Anyway, if you fancy having a play with this plugin, and you're using a decent browser, then you can download it here ( am_tidyadmin.zip ). If you find any bugs or flaws or stuff ( apart from "it doesn't work in IE", and variations of the same tune ) then just let me know.

¥