Evolution of the WordPress interface from 2003-2008

Personally, I dislike the new design. It has good intentions but it misses the mark. This would have been a good example of when not to listen to your users-- of course the majority of them is going to prefer gradients and flashy dropdowns.

It feels to me as if it was built like a crappy powerpoint presentation: sliding and fading just for the sake of sliding and fading. Everyone thinks "Ooh, ahh!" but there really isn't any added usability to the effects.

In some parts of the interface, you have to click multiple times to get to something you shouldn't have to click on to see at all. Once again, you click just for a dropdown. Then you have to click again to get to where you want to go. Eye candy for the sake of eye candy.

In my opinion, the 2.5 Happy Cog design was the best of the bunch. It improved drastically, usability-wise, on top of the previous release, and it did so by re-aligning, no re-designing. You may argue that Happy Cog was limited by the fact that they had to base their work on a previous structure, but I really believe this is the best way to improve UI: incremental updates, each improving upon the last, instead of one quick release that wasn't too well thought out.

Also, I know it's an informal blog, but I think it's really unprofessional to call something the "DO NOT WANT" release. I'm really sick and tired of half-baked "memes" being included in writing as weak attempts at humor. It just comes across badly to me.