Hi Kaspar. I posted the wireframes on the development blog, so thought I would respond to a couple of your concerns. I’ve appreciated your ongoing posts about the upcoming UI, and while the decisions we’ve made in some cases differ from the choices you would have made, please believe we’re trying to serve the needs of the widest audience possible. So, on to your points/questions/suggestions.

Breadcrumb navigation. The breadcrumb is largely in anticipation of the ability to completely collapse the left hand column down to a thin remnant (example on last page of wireframe deck), making the working area as big as possible. The breadcrumb also removes the need for those large screen headings identifying the screen you’re on, since the breadcrumb will do that in less than half the space once the header is styled. So ultimately it’s all in pursuit of more work area, less window dressing. If there was one overriding goal in the design of 2.7, it was reduce scrolling and give the user control. I do think 2.7 goes a long way toward this end result.

Favorites menu. It’s funny, I did see the mockup you did a while back with the “My Tasks” section, and we were talking internally about how funny it was that it mirrored the favorites function that users had suggested/requested during user testing in May. (And I really liked your use of green as an accent color! Potentially another interface prediction on your part….) I can’t answer the why-JavaScript-only question (I’ll leave that to the developers), but the placement is also in anticipation of a collapsed left menu, allowing the favorites, like the breadcrumb, to enable navigation to relevant screens even when the work area is maximized this way. Admittedly, this is an experiment, so we’ll see how people like it. So far when I’ve shown it at WordCamps, people have been pretty psyched about it.

Bonus point: Flock on Mac? Inside joke. :) I actually use Firefox 3 (though I’m not a huge fan of the redesigned tabs, I have to say), though I also check things in other browsers when troubleshooting for someone having a problem with their blog. Whatever the browser wrapper, though, the reason the wireframes are shown in a browser at all (usually they’d just be shown without the wrapper) is to ensure that we allowed enough room for normal browser chrome, in terms of height and width.

Serious conclusion. We definitely do have our ears open, and I appreciate that you assume we are listening. We are! In fact, we created the wireframes specifically in response to the community’s request for something to look at. I know some people may not be fans yet of the interface change, but as you said, it is based on some very actionable feedback that we received during testing, and is an attempt to try and solve those problems. Many of the features and labels have come directly from WordPress users. Having a huge community of users is a blessing and a curse sometimes, because inevitably there will be differing opinions and some people will wish different decisions had been made, even though we’re doing our best to accommodate a wide variety of user behaviors. If the response we’re seeing at WordCamps is anything to go by, 2.7 is going to solve a lot of the issues that were slowing people down.

Thanks for the feedback!