As the creator of the original Khepri 1.5 template and also MissionControl, I have chatted with Kyle Ledbetter (author of AdminPraise) a bit about possible core admin improvements moving forward. With the current roadmap of 1.8 being an incremental update on 1.7 there's really no way to have a significant functional/usability update for 1.8. Not only will it confuse users, but any major changes will in turn effect extensions developers who will be relying on a smooth transition.

I think that the best approach is to focus on Joomla 2.0 (please no major changes in 1.9). This has the opportunity to be a major revamp of the CMS part of Joomla. As a major version change, a wide-ranging set of functional and usability changes makes sense and would be hugely welcomed by the community.

That said, I think we are definitely talking about much more than a new admin template, the admin is just part of a large scale refactor of features and functionality. Talking about what and how the admin should work cannot proceed until a proper roadmap and architecture revamp has been sketched out. When we really have a thorough understanding of the changes in Joomla 2.0, then we can spend time on determining the best usability to bring that functionality to the users in the most usable and understandable fashion.

We could definitely take a page out of the WordPress and Drupal camps and leverage usability testing to find out what are the most common tasks that users need to perform, and then in turn how best to create an interface to make that happen as simply and cleanly as possible. There is huge room for improvement across the board here, and I think that 2.0 is the place to make that happen.

All that said, we definitely have some great experience in the community when it comes to admin templates. There are several quality 3rd party admin templates that have gone through extensive user-driven development that as such, have been able to improve certain areas over the core admin experience. Of course 3rd party admin templates are restricted in how much they can change due to expected usability, as well as 3rd party extension limitations that rely on the core layouts. What I would love to see in 2.0 is a full set of flexible UI 'building-blocks' that is leveraged by the core functionality and is also exposed for 3rd party extensions to use. What we have today is a basically a legacy UI left over from our mambo days. Functionality of extensions has far out-paced simple tables and forms, and relying on these simplistic UI metaphors is greatly limiting usability and how Joomla is perceived in relation to other CMS'es.

I really hope that this valuable experience is leveraged when it comes to rebuilding the admin template, and personal pride, and petty prejudices do not factor in. The administrator was one of the main reasons I joined the Mambo core team originally, and also in the early days of Joomla. I would gladly provide help and valuable experience towards improving the Joomla admin UI, you just have to ask