One thing I wanted to improve in the Admin area of my Wordpress blog was the header menu. I want to be able to reach any admin page in one click, instead of first clicking on the first level link (”Manage” for example) and then only on a submenu link (”Comments“) So here is a very neat plugin : the Worpdress Admin Drop Down Menu
Show me
Want to try before you buy ? Well, sure (except for the “buy” part) I made up this demo page especially for you.
It should work fine under Firefox 2.x, Opera 9.something and MSIE 6 on Windows. At least it does on my computer.
Give me
Get the plugin :
ozh-admin-drop-down-menu.zip
Extract and upload to your blog, preserving directory structure if any.
Note: download counter here and stats on wordpress.org may differ and reflect the number of downloads before this plugin was hosted on the plugin directory
Activate and enjoy. Another friendly install & forget piece of PHP.
Features
The plugin concept itself is rather simple :
- Hide the various admin menus that are splattered all over the place in WordPress 2.5 (wasted space!)
- Insert a new menu on the top dark grey bar, which is unused (wasted space!) otherwise
- Remove a few useless links (wasted space!) on the upper right corner
- Add some cute icons from FamFamFam to menu entries, or don’t add them, it’s up to you
Javascript is involved in order to hide useless links and to make stuff compatible with MSIE6. On modern browsers, everything works even with Javascript disabled.
The plugin comes with a wickedly cool API that will allow other plugin developers to interact with it, like adding your own custom icon for your plugin. Read the API for Coders page for examples and documentation. Also, all elements the plugin produces get custom CSS classes and id’s to allow easy styling or selecting.
Translations
The plugin is ready for interglobanalization and there is a .pot template file included so polyglots can even make their own translation and sent the .mo and .po files to me so I’ll include them in the package.
The plugin is currently translated in:
- Italian, by Gianni Diurno
- Danish, by Thomas
- German, by Christoph Fertinger
- Español, by Karin Sequen
- French, by me
Bonus
Thanks to Dean J. Robinson and his extraordinary CSS skills, Worpdress Admin Drop Down Menu is compatible with the uberclassy Fluency, a very beautiful plugin that redefines the whole admin area.
Requirements
This plugin is intented for serious Power Users only, and as such has very strict requirements :
- A Wordpress blog (designed for 2.5, won’t work on 2.3.3 or older, unless you read below)
- Enough lazyness to feel that sparing a click or two each day is worth it
- A comfortable chair and a fat internet connection
(Although the last point is not directly required to run my plugin, I’ve found that it can greatly enhance your internet experience)
Older Version
Version 1.3.1 is designed for WordPress 1.5 to 2.3.3 and is still available:
- wp_ozh_adminmenu.txt (download and save as .php)
- wp_ozh_adminmenu.php (highlighted code, copy and paste in a blank file, but do not download as is)
The awesome demo of this older version is still available, of course.
Feedback
Sure. Feed me back. Like it? Blog about it. Love it? Click on the download link, see the Paypal button appear, and give it some clicks!
If you’re reporting bugs, you’re welcome, but please provide a screenshot and informations about your browser & your OS.
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Pages: « 1 … 7 8 9 10 11 [12] 13 14 15 16 17 … 35 » Show All
thought, on 13/Mar/08 at 11:25 pm # :
Jim » Thanks for the notice. It’s fixed in 2.0.1
said, on 14/Mar/08 at 1:27 am # :
Ozh, I think you should include “installation” section for your plugins. I know it’s fairly simple to install most of the plugins, but it’s reassuring to see that you have done everything correctly.
replied, on 14/Mar/08 at 7:06 pm # :
I wait for this so long!!! This plugins is even better that the previous version.
Thank you so much!!!
thought, on 15/Mar/08 at 7:51 am # :
thanks for your works.
said, on 15/Mar/08 at 8:05 am # :
Cheers for updating this to work with 2.5! I would honestly hesitate to upgrade simply due to a lack of proper dropdowns in the admin.
Now, here’s a nitpick: the active tab in the menus blends very well into the “classic” color scheme, but any user who prefers the “fresh” color scheme is going to be in a for a more jarring experience. Also, last I saw the jury was still out as to which would be the default. I don’t know how tough it would be to sniff out which was active, but it’s a thought…
wrote, on 15/Mar/08 at 6:19 pm # :
This is an absolutely lovely plugin. Thanks! Just one small gripe. Some of us with big screens have our font sizes in Opera/Firefox set up at 16px at a minimum. With that setting, your CSS breaks down. Could you please use “em” units instead of “px” units?
Thanks!
replied, on 15/Mar/08 at 7:54 pm # :
Thank you for nice plugin.
wrote, on 15/Mar/08 at 9:32 pm # :
It doesn’t go moo on Opera or Safari on Windows.
commented, on 17/Mar/08 at 6:17 pm # :
Any chance this will be updated to work with the Fluency Admin plugin/theme? It rocks on 2.5 but I can only run it or this plugin, but not both. On Firefox 2.0.0.12 on Windows, running both makes the Fluency menus entirely disappear into white nothingness!
Thanks for such an awesome plugin, it will save much time waiting for pages to load only to load a submenu option!
commented, on 18/Mar/08 at 11:21 am # :
Does not work properly with IE7. As it was said before, it would be nice to tell it in your presentation. Well, for the wordpress 2.3.3 version.
But it’s a pleasure to use it.
commented, on 18/Mar/08 at 4:23 pm # :
I see the last commenter mentioned IE 7. Was curious why this was only tested to work for IE 6. I switch the WP 2.5 RC1 to classic color theme, don’t know if that matters or not, but all of the menu items have a double extra space between them.
said, on 19/Mar/08 at 10:44 am # :
It works great but the statpress plugin is either not giving the right url now, or the drop menus are messing up the statpress url…
thought, on 19/Mar/08 at 1:25 pm # :
many thanks for this. it would be nice though if the css was external to the php file, would make it easier for people to edit their own css and adapt this plugin to other admin themes
commented, on 19/Mar/08 at 10:07 pm # :
Merci beaucoup!!!
replied, on 19/Mar/08 at 10:12 pm # :
Seriously, they pay happy cog for a usability review and did not include dropdown menus in the core? I might tweak the CSS, but thanks for that immensely helpful (and well designed) plugin!
wrote, on 19/Mar/08 at 10:21 pm # :
Hmm, one thing though - when an admin screen loads, occasionally, the standard navigation appears briefly before your navigation loads and the standard navigation disppaeards. Is this a necessary consequence of script loading order? jQuery? Can it be avoided? I’m writing a plugin to replace the catgory div with custom content, using jQuery, and I occasionally had the same effect.
commented, on 19/Mar/08 at 10:33 pm # :
And a last one - could be Firebug related. At least it did not appear anymore with firebug disabled. Maybe FB is simply overly slowing the execution.
commented, on 21/Mar/08 at 5:32 am # :
First I got to say this is a great plugin, saves a lot of clicks and on slow internet makes nice difference.
I’m using Wordpress 2.3.3 with the AdminMenu for it. I too have many plugins - 3 line on options.
For those with multiple lines because of so many plugins, I did some tinkering and found an additional semi-fix that’s easy to implement.
First, some of the problem can be fixed with what Muniz changed in the plugins php file, on 03/Jul/07:
/* Nested ULs */
$id li ul {
position:absolute;
left:-9000em;
}
Notice, the position left is changed to 9000 and uses em instead of px. Use FIND to find it and make the change.
But this doesn’t fix the problem of overlapping the content when displayed, so I figured out a way to push the content down. Using Firefox with WebDevloper, I found there’s a section called #submenu which only shows sometimes. You can add padding-bottom and it extends the dark menu area permanently, without overlapping the content. I found that 4em was good for 3 lines.
So…add the following to the styles at the bottom of wp_ozh_adminmenu_wp23.php:
#submenu, #minisub {
padding-bottom: 4em;
}
I also agree that you should add some FAQs and Bug Solutions to the post, mainly so the nest person doesn’t have to read through all the comments to get the answer.
commented, on 21/Mar/08 at 5:46 am # :
I forgot I wanted to add…
My above comment and solution to the multi-line menus problem does still have bugs. In simple terms, the fix permanently adjusts the size of the navigation bar.
The dropdown menus for sections with only one line of links will also have the padding and therefor also much taller. There’s also a blue bar positioned under the dropdown menus, which overlaps the extended dark navigation bar.
In case you have three lines of links and set the padding to 4em, the blue bar also covers about 3px of content (ie. the top border of info messages is cutoff, but readable). I didn’t pick 5em because it added to much wasted space and I don’t care about those 3px.
Anyways, now that thats cleared up, I hope this helps everyone and maybe someone can figure out a way to make it dynamic or something to fix the other problems.
replied, on 21/Mar/08 at 6:29 pm # :
another thing i would suggest for a future update is to get rid of the original menu alltogether. the way things now work, ozhmenu is displayed and admin menu simply hidden, but there is really no reason for it to be put out on the page only to be hidden…
if anybody has an idea how to do it, please let know