Finally, I decided to make this feature (previously exclusive in CSCN-Anniversary theme) into a standalone addon. This plugin turns the XF original staff bar into three parts:

1. The enhanced Alert menu: For Moderators, if there are incoming new reports or approval queue items, the bell icon will be turned into a badged alarm-clock icon indicating moderators & administrators their existence.

2. In the top-right side of Alert menu, the entry links (as badged icons) of reports & approval queue always shown up. // Its CSS style has been specifically tweaked in this style to make sure it always look good in most 3rd-party styles.

3. The wrench-screwdriver icon (to the left of user menu icon) functions as an admin-only button to AdminCP. However, if you installed any add-ons with entries added to the staffbar moderators menu, then this wrench-screwdriver icon will be also available to moderators and will show a dropdown menu containing those new entries introduced by those add-ons.

This is what the alert menu icon looks like when there are things grabbing moderators' attention:

And this is what the alert menu icon looks like when there's nothing in the approval queue and report queue:

When you mouse-hover the mod badge icons, there's a background color change. It is barely noticable if you have set the menu header background with light colors (like XF 2.x default style). This is what it looks like with dark menu header background (on my friend's website with XenTR Revolution style installed):