User blog comment:Brandon Rhea/New Shortcuts Menu in the Page Header/@comment-5645428-20180111005110

I’m not a fan.

The first issue I have with the new menu button is of course, it looks shoehorned into what looked previously very balanced aesthetically.

Second, getting rid of the Add Image and Video links from the header’s previous iteration was a welcome change that I don’t think many people complained about. They’re not essential functions, and instead take an additional click to reach through the respective Images and Videos links sitting prominently in the Explore menu. It is certainly logical. Now, however, clutter is being introduced into the header that is unnecessary and redundant.

There is already the Explore menu, which I thought was supposed to be the primary access point for significant special pages. Recent Changes should be included here, possibly as a logged-in only option. Special:SpecialPages and perhaps Insights are others worth considering. Moreover, Shortcuts needs to be more mobile friendly. I can’t figure it out on a small screen.

If I could make any bets as to where this is going, it would be to phase out both the footer toolbar and Admin Dashboard. The latter I could understand, for those links could be relocated to a number of different places. The footer toolbar, however, that’s where most people would have included such links plus more. Something as helpful and efficient and with such good reception as that should’ve been modernised ages ago. Getting rid of it would be perhaps the most counterintuitive design choice to date in my opinion. Dropping it in favour of an awkward custom dropdown present only at the top corner of the page? It wouldn’t just be me with concerns.