Lighter Menus creates drop-down menus instead of the regular admin menus of the WordPress interface, so that you can browse items with one click and work at your blog in a much more usable environment.
Fast to load, adaptable to color schemes, Lighter Menus comes with silk icons by famfamfam, a option page, and a design that fits within the Wordpress 2.5 interface taking the less room possible.
Lighter Menus it is not an entirely original plugin, its code is largely based on the Admin Drop Down Menus plugin by Ozh. Anyway, it comes with its own flavor and extra features.

Download:

Download Version 2.7
~ 3231 downloads from this page.

Note #1: the latest version of the plugin (and previous versions as well) can always also be downloaded from the Wordpress Repository.

Note #2: if you are using wordpress 2.3.x or earlier, you should stick to the old version of the plugin: lighter admin menu 2.3

Installation:

Extract the archive; put it into your wp-content/plugins folder and activate (deactivate and reactivate if you're upgrading).
Review the options at Design > Admin menus options.

This plugin has been tested with Firefox, Opera, Safari and IE 7.
 

-- the plugin under firefox2

-- the plugin under IE7, with the classic color scheme.

-- the plugin under Opera

-- the plugin under Safari for windows

-- the plugin option page

Translations

This version of Lighter Menus features localizations in:

* Chinese, thanks to dupola
* Japanese, thanks to ne-design
* German, thanks to Kristian Bollnow
* Chinese (Taiwan), thanks to hit1205
* Italian, thanks to, well, yours truly.

More are needed! If you want to translate this plugin in your language you are very welcome! In fact there are very few lines to translate. Just be aware that despite what poEdit wants you to do, you should take a moment to check the code and then translate only the items that are actually under the textdomain 'lighter-menus'. You will notice in the code that 35 or so translatable items have no textdomain indicated (they look like this: _('Dashboard'), instead of this: _('Dashboard', 'lighter-menus') ). They're in the functions "lm_icons" and "lm_build" and they are just menu items names used for reference when binding them with the respective icons or style classes. In such cases just leave the translation empty, it would be useless work to translate said items since they are not for the user to read. Your Wordpress locale takes care of those translations.

changelog:

* 2.7 This version includes Chinese-Taiwan translation. Thanks to hit1205 for the effort! hit1205 also heroically helped to fix the "no howdy" feature for Wordpress Chinese. Thanks man! This version also implements a new feature, asked for by Callum on the blog: the ability to optionally show the comment bubble even if there is nothing to moderate. You're welcome, man! :) I also cleaned a little the appearance of the above mentioned bubble, it should look less ugly now.
And with this I'm really done. An almost round number, 2.7 is really going to be the last update for a while.
* 2.6.9 A leftover "blah" of some testing I had done in the past was still in the output. It's a miracle it didn't show up in a worse way. A big thank you to Shobba for poiting this out and apologies for yet another bugfix update... I also fixed something with the deactivator... Anyway, I am amazed, there's always something to fix.
* 2.6.8 This version includes a Japanese translation, thanks to ne-design, and a German translation, thanks to Kristian Bollnow. Much obliged to both of them! I also managed to have the "no howdy" option working with Wordpress in Japanese (still no luck with the Chinese version, I need a guru of regex to understand this), and fixed a problem with menu icons when running with Wordpress in Japanese (thanks to ne-design for pointing it out). Also, I made the regular menu link color a little brighter, and cleaned the code here and there. I think this will be the last update for a while so let's hope everything is fine with it.
* 2.6.7 This version includes Chinese translation! A million thanks go to dupola for the effort. Also: I fixed a pretty ugly bug that broke the effect of different color of the side menu with local version; I changed the aspect of the option page to make it more similar to the regular Wordpress 2.5 option pages; I fixed the removal of 'Help' and 'Forums' links, where local versions of Wordpress that personalized those links would broke the function; I added the option to remove the 'Howdy', too, although this feature does not work in the Chinese version. While I was there I also redid the italian translation of the plugin, it was horrible. Now it is just a little less horrible. I can't believe how much the IT lexicon sounds ugly in italian. Finally, once again thanks to dupola who made me notice a couple of oversights, including that the link to the plugin home page was mysteriously all scrambled. All should be fixed now. All things considered, I'd say this update is recommended too.
* 2.6.6 Corrected a serious bug that prevented the new 2.5.1 media uploader to work with Lighter Menus. Now everything should work out fine. Also fixed the comment awaiting moderation message that incorrectly showed up with 0 comments to moderate. Recommended.
* 2.6.5 This version revamped almost entirely the most part of the code... It already was in a way, but this plugin is basically now an adaptation of the current Ozh's Admin Drop Down Menus plugin. Anyway, my plugin required many hours of extra work to implement new features including an option page (now with more options), more consistent colors and adaptation to color schemes (also custom ones), an uninstaller etc. This update also fixes a lot of bugs and potential bugs compared to version 2.6.1, and also imports from Ozh a number of great features like WPMU support, the ability to optionally display the original submenu, and the wrapping of the main menu within smaller windows. Useless to say how much I am grateful to the man.
* 2.6.1 This version adds an easy to use uninstaller to optionally remove every trace of Lighter Menus upon deactivation. This feature can be found in the Design > Lighter Menus page. You won't notice, but this version also moves all the options in only one record in the database to occupy less space. Okay, there were only two records before, but still. IMPORTANT: because of the modified options, you are advised to deactivate and reactivate the plugin upon upgrading. Also in this version there are few small fixes. I always find small things to fix, I can't say why.
* 2.6 Fixed a bug with Safari not adjusting the width of the menus correctly and other minor fixes.
* 2.5.9 This version prepared Lighter Menus for localization. Do come forward if you're willing to translate this plugin in your language, there are very few lines to translate. Only italian and default english are available so far (please check the "Technical note for Translators" in the readme.txt). Also, I slightly changed the name of the plugin, I hated the old name, I hope you'll understand.
* 2.5.8 Fixed a issue with other plugins adding extra long menu entries. Now menus widen and narrow at ease. Thanks to Karl for pointing out this.
* 2.5.7 Added a nifty option page where you can toggle a couple of customizations, like menu icons. For your convenience, the necessary files of the plugin now consist in just one file "lighteradminmenus.php", and the "images" folder. All the css files are now integrated and can be removed from the plugin folder after the upgrade. Small fixes as much as you want.
* 2.5.6 Tried to distinguish chromatically the elements of the menu accordingly to Wordpress 2.5, sliding them to the right in the main menu. Maybe a good idea, maybe not. Let me know.
* 2.5.5 I never realized Wordpress 2.5 had two color schemes (thanks tonchi!). Lighter admin menus now adapts to this, quite beautifully I must say. Also very important fix: the menu now gives feedback when editing posts and pages (it failed to before).
* 2.5.4 fixed the awaiting comments alert and other minor glitches. Cleaned the code a good deal. Recommended.
* 2.5.3 slight redesign to favor smooth corners in the menus.
* 2.5.2 small fixes (thanks to Robert!) and a slight redesign favoring the "tab" effect. Also FF 2 and IE 7 look more alike now.
* 2.5.1 small fixes
* 2.5 redesigned to fit into wordpress 2.5.
* 2.3 trying to fix a function that breaks translations of wordpress. We'll see.
* 2.2 actually the first version of this plugin. It should be alpha something. But because I haven't changed a line of php code in it, it is only fair that the version number should depend on the plugin I used as the base for this