WordPress 2.5 did give us some useful improvements, however I feel that the widgets became much harder to use, and I think most people would agree with me.
This screen shows the way widgets used to . All you need to do is select the widget and move it across any available sidebars to arrange them, or simple drop it back into the placeholder at the bottom to remove the widget from your blog. Pretty simple to understand, fun to use.
But with WordPress 2.5 this becomes a 3-step process which is not only confusing, it’s also much harder and no fun at all.
Gone is the “drag and drop” function and honestly I don’t see the reason to change what is not broken. Now you have to first (1) select the sidebar you want to edit (2) add the available widgets to the sidebar and only then can you (3) move and rearrange the widgets.
Pop Quiz: How do you move a widget from one sidebar to another?
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I kinda like the new way. Gives way better controllability and definitely more room for developers to start using widgets in thus far unconventional ways. Granted the slide and drop feature was more handy to assign but all considered.. I like it!
I gottcha! Now do you still think I would upgrade, not at all then. I keep on playing with my widgets most of the time rearranging or updating information in the widgets.
@ Gobala: I’m still undecided myself on whether I want to have all those troubles or not with the new version. It seems that the folks at WP changed a few things they didn’t need to, which baffles me.
is there a way to remove a widget?
I tried just deleting a text widget and it wiped all of them out.
this is so bad.
April fools was last week WP.
I find it hard to belive how few people are willing to point out that WP 2.5 is kind of a mess.
The media center is useless, much worse than the old way … which was clumsy but always owrked.
The way of handling widgets is now archaic .. defeats the purpose of having widgets, easier to just go in and edit the sidebar code.
The vaunted automatic update of plug ins apparently was never tested in the real world … it has some sort of permission problems and I certainly am not CMOD’ing the WP folders to be any more open than they currently are.
And the admin screens don’t even follow standard screen size protocols … if you run a high resolution scree the window stretches all across the screen forcing you to go back and forth like a mule plowing a field.
Sad .. and 95% of the WP blogging mafia just smooze Automatic about what a wonderful thing this mess really is. I’ll stick with 2.3 until I find a non-WP replacement, sad to leave the fold but 2.5 makes Microsoft updates look intelligent.
Widgets used to be the easiest part of Wordpress.
Give me windows upgrades anytime instead of wp’s. Last upgrade took me the better part of two days and then I had to delete and reinstall all of my posts…and sadly, that was only a few weeks ago. I agree – leave what ain’t broke as it is. Most of the widgets don’t work in the themes that I like anyway and are just sitting there unactivated. WP is not an easy program to work with unless you’re a computer geek. Spent part of day looking up CMOD on Google and still have no idea what it is. Sorry WP, I like Windows.
Tim Mack
Not sure if it is just me but I have tried editing and adding widgets in 2.5 without success.
When editing a widget it is not possible to highlight the text either by dragging over the text or right click and select all.
Also I can’t add new widgets. I have even added a duplicate of one that was working before the upgrade and it will not show even though the original still shows ok.
I have tried editing and adding in both IE and FF to no avail.
Guess I will go back to the 2.3.
Bruce
I have to agree to Gobala on this one. I just upgraded several sites yesterday & found ….. whoa … big changes here. The rather disappointing place is how the plugins are managed. But I like the way plugins can be turn on or off.
So it is a case of I step forward & 1 step back.
Very true. Now we have to make some extra steps just to add or remove widgets. (sigh) Thinking of downgrading. It’s so much fun using the old school method..