With the release of WordPress 2.0 they have added a few cosmetic improvements but mostly its under the shell of the system. While WordPress 2.0 has undeniably added much greater functionality for the developer, keeping ahead of competitor platforms, the Dashboard has been left behind.
Tiger Admin, from Steve Smith at Ordered List, is available for both WordPress 1.5 and 2.0 and addresses this issue for me. Steve has shown the power of implementing CSS correctly and has altered the whole WordPress Dashboard creating a slick and stylish interface in the process without loosing functionality. Tiger Admin is a plugin that combats a dull, uninspiring interface with one that is bright, bold and well designed but alters none of the underlying XHtml or structure. Written solely in CSS2 it helpfully reverts back to the default interface when using browsers that don’t support it, but Firefox and Safari should be fine.
Above all, Ordered List is simple to implement, simply extract the zip file to your plugin folder and upload. Then just activate the in the usual way from the Plugins option page.
[...] The Shuttle team has finally released some mock-ups of what they envisage their admin panel will look like for WordPress. Check out the pictures on Khaled’s Broken Kode and prepare to be suitably impressed with their plans for one of the only weak points of the awesome WordPress blogging solution. With some hard hitters in the team including Chris J Davis, Michael Heilemann, Bryan Veloso and of course Khaled, its a possibility that this could make it into a future release of WordPress. For the time being, if you haven’t checked out Steve Smith’s WP Tiger Admin, you should (read my quick intro here). [...]