Why is the media upload button not in the main toolbar & can it be placed there instead?

Question

Is there a good reason why the wp media upload button is not placed within the main edit toolbar, and can we put it there instead of floating above??

Answer 1

There is an action 'media_buttons' where these buttons are inserted. Some plugins are using that action to add more buttons, dropdown lists or links. If they had to use the TinyMCE toolbar, they had less room and more restrictions regarding style and JavaScript access.

In short: the current placement is better for plugins.

Moving the default button to the toolbar would probably break some core scripts that depend on that position in the DOM. Maybe you can move it around after onload.

Answer 2

Just a proof of concept, not sure about the implications that @toscho signals, but at first it works as expected.

There's a glitch that makes a huge activation border when the upload button is clicked. Maybe another insertion point could solve it...

add_action( 'admin_head-post.php', 'wpse_72093_move_upload_button' );

function wpse_72093_move_upload_button() {
    ?>
    <script type="text/javascript">
        jQuery(window).load( function() {   
            jQuery("#wp-content-media-buttons")
            .appendTo(".mceToolbarStart.mceToolbarStartButton.mceFirst:first"); 

            jQuery('#content-add_media').html(jQuery('#content-add_media')
            .html()
            .replace('Subir/Insertar ', ''));
        });
    </script>
    <?php
}

Note: the second jQuery command is not shown in the snapshot above. It will remove the text from the button. Replace with your own language.

Reference: jquery remove text partially