Ever wanted to know how to waste a lot of space for no particular reason? Look no further than a bunch of the recent updates to open-source projects. WordPress in particular has done a really good job of trying to force everyone to use a 1440x900 resolution1 because any resolution lower or higher than this results in a design uglier than sin. I feel particularly bad for people who are using the most common resoultion, which is currently 1366x768, as this resolution is particularly awful on screens larger than 11 inches. Let's look at an example.
Here is the theme preview window for WordPress:
Does that side panel really need to be so damned wide? Does it even need to be there at all? Why isn't this a stupid-ass JavaScript pop-over that consumes 45MB of system resources for no damned reason? Yes, WordPress is (supposedly) open-source so that people can go in and change the code to whatever they want, but this isn't a viable solution. Nor is the standard response of "write a plugin".
WordPress, along with some other open-source projects, needs to be retired. There is just way too much crap mixed in with the spaghetti code for anyone to resolve in any appreciable amount of time.
