New Admin Bar Design
Today we launched a redesigned admin bar, the handy toolbar you see at the top of every WordPress.com blog when you’re logged in. We’ve retired the old flat blue look in favor of something that better matches the swanky new WordPress.com dashboard.
The new admin bar is designed to command less attention — the previous blue bar had a tendency to clash with some themes. With the new design, the admin bar should recede into the background — available when you need it, not too noticeable when you don’t.
We’ve also included a few extra touches of style for users of the latest-generation browsers with the best CSS support.
A before-and-after view
Is there a feature of WordPress.com you’d like to see in the admin bar? Would you like the admin bar to be displayed in your dashboard? Leave a comment and let us know how we can make this feature more useful for you.
May 5th at 9:52 pm
For me is very nice the new.
May 5th at 9:55 pm
I’d like to go to the Stats page directly via the Admin bar, if possible.
May 5th at 10:02 pm
Ok. That’s nice. I need an html editor.
May 5th at 10:04 pm
I just noticed this lol I prefer it actually. Makes me think of doing something like that for a website. I wonder if it can be given opacity?
May 5th at 10:07 pm
COOL!!!
~Adam!
May 5th at 10:09 pm
The new admin bar looks fantastic – good move!
May 5th at 10:16 pm
I’d think it be cool if we could customize the colour ourselves; the one now seems to be made for Safari.
May 5th at 10:19 pm
I like it but it’ll take a little getting used to for me. I like the more fluid look much more than the blue, though.
A link to the admin comments page might be a good feature. And if the WordPress.com search could be incorporated into it somehow that would be great! We could search from our browsers then.
May 5th at 10:23 pm
Cool! I don’t think ye need any changes
May 5th at 10:27 pm
great!
May 5th at 10:31 pm
I notice the change, the old one didn’t bother me much, but I like the new one.
May 5th at 10:33 pm
Ahem. I am sure it looks much better on a Safari on MacOS, being perfectly color-coordinated–what about FireFox on XP? Is there any chance of having the color controlled by a configuration switch in the control panel?
May 5th at 10:38 pm
nice job
May 5th at 10:43 pm
This new admin bar looks much better! Thanks for the asthetic update!
May 5th at 10:48 pm
Yes!!!
Thanks to all you WordPress guys. That old blue bar was a real eyesore, and I’m glad to see it go. The gray one is much less obtrusive, especially for my blogs since I tend to favor dark themes.
Good work!
May 5th at 10:59 pm
Much better. Thx : )
May 5th at 11:02 pm
Pretty swanky.
May 5th at 11:11 pm
Hi Matt,
Yeah, this new admin bar looks cool. When it releases?
Waiting…
May 5th at 11:12 pm
Difficult to get used
May 5th at 11:19 pm
FANTASTIC, u guys are the coolness!
Now… for more free themes
May 5th at 11:20 pm
It just did, wow my eyes!
Thanks to the team.
May 5th at 11:22 pm
Yep, super nice. Better on the eyes. Like it.
May 5th at 11:32 pm
better.
stats would be good too.
May 5th at 11:42 pm
As always WordPress…LOVE IT! It does blend so much more nicely with my theme than the blue. Thank you, thank you, thank you! You all are the best.
May 5th at 11:55 pm
I really like the new color, it is a lot less noticeable. I think it would be more convenient if you put the Blog Surfer feature in the tool bar, so we don’t have to go searching for it.
May 6th at 12:00 am
I LOVE IT!!!
May 6th at 12:01 am
love the new admin bar, loathe the “possible related posts” {automatically generated}…
May 6th at 12:02 am
The colour really depends on the page, as the old blue suited my website much better than the new grey, which stands out in a not-so-good way…
And like ismailimail said, a stats link would be great! Perhaps even the option to add other dashboard tools.
May 6th at 12:02 am
May must be the busiest moth yet on WordPress!…
@fmwatkins I agree, perhaps the menus could be given some opacity. That would really finish off a really clean look.
What option I’d really like on the dashboard- some sorts of stats info would be cool.
May 6th at 12:03 am
I have to agree with ismailimail and CJ both those ideas would be a great help.
I do like the new bar though. Looks much better.
May 6th at 12:03 am
Add a “New Page” link. Posts aren’t everything you know
May 6th at 12:05 am
I LOVE the steel gray bar. Nice choice.
Can we edit our guests’ comments again? I miss this feature.
Thank you. : )
May 6th at 12:07 am
good look!
(^_^)v
nice…
May 6th at 12:08 am
great stuff, guys
gg
May 6th at 12:12 am
This is great. Very nice.
May 6th at 12:13 am
I agree.
It’s tres pretty.
The opacity thing would be cool, too.
May 6th at 12:15 am
Not a significant improvement, actually. Would you make direct link to stats page?
May 6th at 12:15 am
Looks good so far, but I have yet to use it.
Thanks for your work!
May 6th at 12:20 am
Everythign looks cool in a soft-silver look. Just ask the wacky folks at Apple.
May 6th at 12:20 am
i’d like to be able to see when there’s spam. something small like a little trash bag or “recycle” icon. click to go to the spam page.
May 6th at 12:22 am
I agree with Chris Dorman. It looks a little flat almost like the screen has not finished loading. Can we get a choice of colors? Also, I appreciate the page views info, but I would really like to see how long someone spends on a page. Is wehat i am writing interesting or causing them to click off quickly?
May 6th at 12:23 am
love it.
May 6th at 12:25 am
Sounds good new admin bar.
Thank you
(Indus Asia Online Journal)
May 6th at 12:27 am
I second the recommendation to add a link directly to the stats page.
Love the gray.
May 6th at 12:31 am
We should have the ability to customize the colors, it gets too boring after a while.
~Guymed
May 6th at 12:31 am
Thank you, kindly. Sure it’s a small detail, but it’s going that extra mile when clearly you don’t have to that shows us how much you care about this site and all of us who use it. I for one appreciate that a lot.
May 6th at 12:34 am
This is much better…bravo. Good job.
May 6th at 12:34 am
Yeah… I like the new bar better. Is it possible to add the stats under My Account?
Tx so much.
May 6th at 12:35 am
It is really nice!
I’d also like to go to the Stats page directly via the Admin bar, if possible.
May 6th at 12:36 am
I like to read after I’m done managing my blog, so a button to go to wordpress.com home would be a nice feature in the admin bar.
May 6th at 12:39 am
Agreed about changing the color if possible; I’d also like to go straight to the blog stats page. I never know about these comments, and whether I’m asking y’all if I can please have a bicycle that will take me to Mars . . . (aka unrealistic requests.) But anyway.
May 6th at 12:40 am
I like it! A lot less distracting for sure…
May 6th at 12:52 am
wow the new admin bar is awesome. awesome job! It would be cool to go directly to the stats page or comments. If you could go directly to comments, it would be very easy for me.
May 6th at 12:53 am
Great! Thank you folks!
May 6th at 12:54 am
So cool, i Love it
May 6th at 12:56 am
nice… I like it, and yes it does match my Mac OS with Safari. However, I think we all like to “personalize” things, so a way to choose the color (maybe in your profile?) would be a great addition.
May 6th at 12:58 am
Now I feel wordpress is complete
May 6th at 12:59 am
Maybe Option to select a Smaller Bar
But great color.. simple is good
May 6th at 1:00 am
great!
May 6th at 1:03 am
I like the new one better, not too strong .. yet still available ..
May 6th at 1:03 am
I like it… better then the previous one
May 6th at 1:06 am
Thanks WordPress buddys!!!!!!!!!!!!
Let me give you a hug, laugh
May 6th at 1:06 am
That’s awesome! I think that wordpress is awesome the way it is right now, and very helpful for information!
~Bike Boy93~
May 6th at 1:12 am
I like this change especially as it relates to the Safari browser. Thanks!
May 6th at 1:12 am
It’s Good for me, in the future Web 3.0 you can make a bar that matchs with each blog
May 6th at 1:14 am
the gray is cool
thx, i love dark themes too !!
May 6th at 1:20 am
so cool !!is more cool
May 6th at 1:21 am
nice one!
wanbel
May 6th at 1:22 am
Thanks Word Press Guys. I like the new design. Who knows where http://canadanewsDC.com can go now!
May 6th at 1:23 am
It’ll take some time getting used to, but it looks nice.
May 6th at 1:24 am
The old blue one never really bothered me, but this one looks great on a MacOS platform. It actually looks pretty decent on XP too.
May 6th at 1:29 am
nice
May 6th at 1:33 am
Yay!
The blue was jarring.
May 6th at 1:37 am
nice! it really suits my logo.
May 6th at 1:41 am
Looks great. Thank you!
May 6th at 1:43 am
Always have the feature Dashboard available whereever you are. It would make things a whole lot easier.
May 6th at 1:53 am
I like it – even if it is Safari-centric.
One possible suggestion: if you have more than one blog, then when you click on ‘My Dashboard’ you see all the blogs on your account. It would be great if you could just see the one whose dashboard you are currently logged in on. It would save you from accidentally clicking on the wrong dashboard.
May 6th at 1:54 am
yes, its nice! a creative step.
May 6th at 1:55 am
I, too, would like to have control over the color scheme myself. Otherwise–I like it–even though blue is my favorite color!
May 6th at 1:59 am
I’ll add my voice to the growing chorus asking for a link to the stats page. (Or, even better, some sort of statistics information straight in the bar itself.)
May 6th at 2:01 am
i like both actually. hehe.
May 6th at 2:01 am
I like the new color. The option to change the colors would be nice, as well as the option to have it appear in the dashboard
May 6th at 2:04 am
Oh, smart idea…
May 6th at 2:04 am
Swanky indeed. Great work, guys!
May 6th at 2:09 am
so great! I love it
May 6th at 2:13 am
Nice bar, but it must have put bugs into the image loader. it is all black and I can only see half of the image loading screen when I go to insert a picture in the post. As it was it was coming up as an error on the page before. Anyone else having these issues?
May 6th at 2:17 am
Matches my “mac” very nicely. Search function would be neat.
May 6th at 2:23 am
i like it. but, it would be even more useful if you could customize it. like being able to put blog stats or something like that
May 6th at 2:33 am
Another vote for a stats page link!
http://mrgnome.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/the-illusion-of-reality-matter-and-antimatter/
May 6th at 2:34 am
actually, I need mobile blogging, not new design.
May 6th at 2:37 am
blue to graphite eh? cool
May 6th at 2:38 am
Thank you Matt…
Just like what some have said, a direct link to the Stats page would be very nice.
May 6th at 2:39 am
the new admin bar is nice. gradient is great, look great within safari.
May 6th at 2:44 am
LOVE the gray look! I sounded so lame when I got a new banner and muttered…”uh, the blue wordpress admin bar clashes with my new banner!” NOT ANYMORE! HAHAHA.
May 6th at 3:01 am
blog stats link or even better a widget in the admin bar displaying todays page views
May 6th at 3:01 am
I would love to see in the stats the number of unique visitors along with the number of hits!
May 6th at 3:02 am
Subtle colour, love it.
I would like to have number of comments (akismet and user’s comment) in the dashboard.
Thanks and keep creative!
May 6th at 3:05 am
i love it