Movable Elements in the Widgets Page

[dcole07]

It's hard to make a widgets management page that is to everyone's liking, but it'd be easier to please people if we allowed then to customize the Widgets page a little. This same kind of functionality is already in the Post and Pages editor pages.

I think we should allow them to set a maximum number of widget columns the Available Widgets and Inactive Widgets will expand to. Then allow the sidebars (Widget Areas) to fill the available space, meaning they could have two sidebar columns if they wanted.

It'd also be nice if people could swap the position of the sidebars and the two widget holding sections.

This could likely be done with a plugin, but it'd be nice if it was added to core. The options could be hidden away in the Screen Options tab along with the Enable Accessibility Mode.

Does anyone want to own this ticket and create the patch? I'm for someone else doing it, but I could end up doing it if no one else will. I'll take ownership until someone else steps forward.

[JohnMyr]

Available Widgets description as tooltip or hidden as expandable would also save a lot of screen estate, and the css of widget drag buttons may be tweaked to better utilize screen estate. If widget area panel at right may move as a user scroll the page on small resolution screens usability will be better when theres only one column of widgets at left.

+1

[JohnMyr]

I`m adding 3 pics with Widgets UI on 1024*768 resolution. Second/third image has css tweaks ( 5 min in Firebug ) to show how much better screen estate may be used. Current use of screen estate is very problematic and bad usability. I guess the usability contributors Jane organize should have a look at Widgets UI.

​http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/3992/widget3.jpg
​http://img26.imageshack.us/img26/3456/widgets2.jpg
​http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/3200/widgets1.jpg

[azaozz]

-1. Don't see a point in having a very long column of Available widgets and then two short columns of 1-2 folded sidebars.

An improvement would probably be to make the sidebars freely draggable so they can be placed lower on the screen and easily reached when the Available widgets section is very long. The alternative would be to make the Available widgets fixed height and scrollable.

Replying to JohnMyr:
All this can easily be done with a plugin by adding some CSS directly to the head of the widgets page.

[dcole07]

Replying to azaozz:

-1. Don't see a point in having a very long column of Available widgets and then two short columns of 1-2 folded sidebars.

Some users have a monitor width greater than 1600px. That means they have 4 columns of available widgets and if they are using a theme with a lot of sidebars, such as Thematic or Hybrid, then they will have more than a dozen sidebars.

Another idea would be to hide the closed sidebars, unless they are all closed. That way, you don't have to scroll up and down to get widgets from the top of the available widgets to the last opened sidebar.

The problem with having this as a plugin would be it's effectiveness. Finding and changing an option in the backend is considerable easier, than finding the correct plugin that fixes an annoyance. I see this ticket as bringing the Widgets page up to par with the Post and Page pages. However, it might be better to put these improvements in a plugin until more of the community voices the need for it.

Allowing the available widgets, inactive widgets, and each sidebar to be draggable would be an improvement to, for people with small monitor resolutions, IMO. Then people could reorder the available widget and inactive widgets, or even move the items between the left and right side.

[azaozz]

Replying to dcole07:

Another idea would be to hide the closed sidebars...

One of the main requests for the Widgets screen was to have all sidebars on it at the same time. Why would you want to revert this?

Perhaps an improvement to the UI would be to have the sidebars vertically draggable so the user can bring the needed sidebar (when there are many) closer to the Available Widgets area and maybe hiding the descriptions in Available Widgets. Both can be implemented easily by plugin.