In my first comment above I stated that installing such a plugin would be an “all or none” decision for me since I wouldn’t want the admin areas of different WordPress installations to look different. Totally different.

I have to admit that all of my backends (16 installations as of this writing) already DO look quite different from WordPress “out of the box”. It has become so normal for me that I wasn’t aware of it anymore!

I’m talking about the plugin “W2O Admin Dropdown Menu” which is one of the first plugins that I install on every new WordPress website I’m responsible for. It has no user configurable options at all it does is transforming the vertical admin menu on the left hand side of the screen into a horizontal drop down menu on top of the screen.

For me, this is absolutely fantastic. It saves time (most menus of most programmes I work with are designed this way), it saves screen space, it increases clarity and comprehensibility.

Yes, my admin areas still look somewhat “vintage” and not really fancy. But that’s exactly what I want my backends to be! Fancyness would result in more white space and thus in more scrolling, more searching on more subscreens etc. I admit that his may be a matter of taste, and my taste may be “old school”… ;-)