Unclickable area within admin menu

[johnbillion]

When a top level admin menu item is expanded, for example when viewing the Posts screen, there is a dead area immediately below the top level menu item and its first child menu item which is unclickable but still shows the pointer cursor.

I occasionally click this area and wonder why my click didn't register.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Click the Posts menu
2. Hover your mouse cursor immediately below the top level Posts item but above the All Posts item
3. Observe that your cursor shows a pointer but this area is not clickable

See attached screenshots for more info.

Removed unclickable top padding of sub-menu <ul>. Added top padding to <a> of first sub-menu <li> so it is clickable.

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/51551

[opurockey]

Apply patch

[opurockey]

Apply patch

[ryelle]

Now that the submenu items have a hover indicator, do you still think the gap is an issue? There's more visual feedback that you're not hovering over the item yet.

[kurudrive]

Hi everyone.

At first, I checked @opurockey 's 51551.1.patch.
I can looks like some improvement but still remaining probrem.

So I created another patch file.

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/51551/51551.3.diff

@johnbillion @ryelle
Please check when you have time.

This patch removes the cursor:pointer rule on #adminmenu li rather than overriding it for #adminmenu .submenu as in the previous patch.

This rule does not appear to need to be here since the cursor pointer changes for any anchor elements in the menu and the pointer on the li is the reported bug. So, unless this is here for a reason we can remove some code. Always prefer to solve issues by removing code rather than adding code. Looked back at the history and that has been there 9+ years, and I believe the admin has been refreshed at least once since then so I believe it to just be a legacy rule that really isn't needed.

Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/51551

[circlecube]

@kurudrive your patch did fix the issue for me. It fixes the hover state issue at the top and at the bottom of the sub-menu. I appreciate that it's not using any negative margins too! While testing I found that the rule your patch overrides may not be needed in the first place, submitted another patch to simply remove that rule rather than override it for submenus.

Would love someone else to test and weigh in on if that rule was useful for any edge cases. From my investigation, the cursor shouldn't display for all <li>s in the #adminmenu, as anything that is clickable is an anchor or a button.

[johnbillion]

@circlecube This does indeed fix the root cause of a cursor being shown on an unclickable area. Let's go with this.

[kurudrive]

@circlecube Hi. I feel your patch is better than my patch. Thanks.

[johnbillion]

In 51684:

Administration: Remove a misleading pointer cursor from list items in the admin menu.

This prevents unclickable areas within the menu from appearing clickable.

Props circlecube, kurudrive, ryelle, opurockey

Fixes #51551

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/51684

https://core.trac.wordpress.org/changeset/51684