I’d be glad to try your new version of Lighter Menus. Not sure what you mean that you’re worried it’s not “lighter” anymore; if it gets all the menu stuff up out of the way, that’s what I want. WP 2.5 seems to be all about taking up as much space as possible, and it bugs me. I can’t go higher res because I’m too nearsighted, and I hate the jumbled mess the other menu forms make. Wonder if the other plugin creators could be convinced to categorize their plugins so they are sub-menu options rather than top-level menu options – it would be more reasonable, I think, in addition to solving the screen-width problem.

Have you considered talking to Ozh about collaboration? Granted, I haven’t tried your revision yet, but it might be worth bringing it up.

Unfortunately, while the My Color option works by itself, it still doesn’t seem to work with the menu plugins. Both menu plugins revert to their original colors as soon as I activate them. The links at the bottom of the page (Wordpress, Documentation, Feedback) and the frames around the boxes on the Write page do change, but the rest of it is as it was in the screenshots from before. Guess I’ll just have to settle for the blue for now; function is more important than color, in the grand scheme of things

Thanks for trying, though! I do appreciate the help.

Header: EAF3FA — for the header (same background as for the admin menus)
Highlight: 913AC5 — on the frontpage, colour of your blog’s header
Mixture: can be the same as previous one, as it is not being used anywhere, yet.

Thanks for the screenshots! Which version of Baltic Amber Themes are you using?

The plugin listing background colour bug is most probably caused by the browser, while the reason for main menu (Write, Manage, etc.) pushing the sidemenu downwards is the number of main menu items — added there by the plugins you have installed, and also the fact that the width of your monitor is 1024 pixels, which in this case is too narrow for the number of menu items you have there. That is also the reason why Admin Drop Down Menus don’t fit in.

I designed the themes to save the vertical content space by putting the main menu right next to the blog’s title. Due to the fact that you have so many menu items and a 1024px monitor, I suggest you use one of the “compact menus” plugins instead of my themes, because there is almost nothing I could do to correct the issues with either of plugins or my theme without loosing the purpose of each — to make menus more compact and to make maximum use of horizontal space.

If you want to set only your admin colour scheme (leaving the original design and layout), you may select ‘My Colour Scheme’ or ‘Random Colour Scheme’ in User Options and try using one of the compact menu plugins.

Baltic Amber by itself
Baltic Amber with Admin Drop Down Menus
Baltic Amber with Lighter Menus
Admin Drop Down Menus by itself
Lighter Menus by itself

I looked at the Lighter Menus plugin and it turns out that it doesn’t add any additional CSS identifiers to the main navigation bar in order to notify that it has taken over that particular menu bar. It means that there is only a very complex way for other plugin authors to know that it is being used.

I suggest you take a look at the Admin Drop-down Menus plugin (with similar functionality), which I got working by adding only four lines of CSS in the latest version of Amber Themes (so be sure to update).

Anyway, I understand the thing about the two menus overlapping, I’ll fix that somehow for sure.