Mike Walsh

The 2.5 release dramatically changed the layout of the WordPress Dashboard. 
This plugin implements an admin theme which results in the Dashboard looking 
similar (but not exactly) to how it looked prior to the 2.5 release. This is 
implemented using CSS declarations which take precedence over those shipped 
with WordPress.
This plugin also supports Andy Staines’ <a href="http://www.stuff.yellowswordfish.com/admin-drop-down-menus/" title="Advanced Admin Menus" rel="nofollow ugc">Advanced Admin Menus</a> and similarly 
employs CSS declarations which take precendence over those shipped with the 
plugin. The result is Advanced Admin Menus which look closer to those shipped 
in Andy’s pre-2.5 plugin. The required “click” to activate a menu remains.
This plugin has been tested (but not exhaustively) with IE7, Firefox 2.x, 
Apple’s Safari all running on the Windows platform. No other testing has 
been performed. I personally use IE most of the time but that is largely 
due to some thing I use at work which require IE.
<h3>Credits</h3>
I got the idea to do this after looking at the 
<a href="http://deanjrobinson.com/projects/fluency-admin/" title="Fluency Admin There" rel="nofollow ugc">Fluency Admin Theme</a>, 
which doesn’t support IE or I probably would have used it, and the 
<a href="https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/baltic-amber-admin-themes-and-schemes/" title="Baltic Amber">Baltic Amber</a> theme. 
Fluency redesigns the Dashboard and Baltic Amber offers multiple color choices 
for the Dashboard. After seeing how Baltic Amber loaded, I realized I 
could do something similar for the CSS declarations I wanted to change. 
It was surprisingly easy.

Retro-Dashboard Admin Theme

This plugin implements an admin theme which results in the Dashboard looking similar (but not…

.fay

This plugin allows you to add a sliding login/dashboard panel to any WordPress Theme. This awesome panel is based on http://web-kreation.com/index.php/tutorials/nice-clean-sliding-login-panel-built-with-jquery/
Instead of modifying directly theme files, just install this plugin so you can preserve you panel when switching between themes (or after themes updates).
You can also specify your own HTML content to put in the panel… Yes! this is awesome!

WP Sliding Login/Dashboard Panel

Excellent

Automatically add a sliding login/dashboard (or whatever HTML content) to your Wordpress Theme

Retro-Dashboard Admin Theme vs WP Sliding Login/Dashboard Panel