[RFC] View Active Topics in navbar

[Alien_Time]

This request is for the prosilver style. ATM the 'View your posts' link in the navbar div at the top of all forum pages is useful. But I feel that 'View Active Topics' is even more useful since a lot of my users (including myself) always visit the view active topic link and right now the only way to view active topics is to visit the forum index page each time. So I think that having this link at the top will be very useful. I know this can be easily added by simply adding <li><a href="{U_SEARCH_ACTIVE_TOPICS}">{L_SEARCH_ACTIVE_TOPICS}</a></li> to the navbar div. But the limited space available here is the issue with it. Based on the discussions here, it seems in 3.1 we may end up having additional links for Notifications, a link to Unread PM and User Control Panel, etc... In lower resolution screens this may be the most that can be displayed. Then again, we can add another <ul class="linklis"> to add another line to display 'View your posts' ,' View Active Topics', etc.. but this may be too much. So how can this be added to prosilver? I know Arty is currently working on a responsive layout for prosilver, is this something that may be added to prosilver style in the future?

[EXreaction]

Ease of navigation and usability are two big issues here. We probably do want to adjust how the links such as those are setup and how it helps users and add some others that may be helpful, but as it is designed now, we don't have any way of adding more without causing usability issues (just too much junk the user doesn't typically worry about).

If someone has some suggestions for organizing the navigation better we'd love to hear it, but we can't really add more links (even if they are useful) as it does cause a problem with clutter.

[Master_Cylinder]

If someone has some suggestions for organizing the navigation better we'd love to hear it, but we can't really add more links (even if they are useful) as it does cause a problem with clutter.

Drop down menus?

[Alien_Time]

Ease of navigation and usability are two big issues here. We probably do want to adjust how the links such as those are setup and how it helps users and add some others that may be helpful, but as it is designed now, we don't have any way of adding more without causing usability issues (just too much junk the user doesn't typically worry about).

If someone has some suggestions for organizing the navigation better we'd love to hear it, but we can't really add more links (even if they are useful) as it does cause a problem with clutter.

Yeah...I understand that... I guess we might need to maybe style the navbar a little differently if we want to add additional links like this. I always have been wondering how to add Active topic links along with the rest without cluttering but like you said it does turn out to cause usability issues when too many are there. Its fine with high resolution screens where screen width is plenty but doesnt look good in lower resolutions where there is a limitation of screen width and it looks like there are too many links out there. I also would love to hear if someone have suggestions on how we can maybe restyle this navigation better.

[EXreaction]

Drop down menus are a common solution to the problem of too many links, but we would need to figure out where it is best to place them, how to organize them (especially if there are multiple drop downs), and how to identify to users what sort of information will be in the drop down so they don't have to search through every drop down on the page to find what they need.

[Master_Cylinder]

There are menu MODs that we could look at; perhaps one them already figured out a good way to organize the menu(s) or we can tweak as needed.

[Alien_Time]

I have an idea for this on how we can re-organize the links and reduce the number of links in the Navbar which creates more space to add 'VIew Active Topic' Link to the navbar itself. Here is my post in another topic about this. Check it out and let me know if this can be done: viewtopic.php?f=108&t=44827&p=257553#p257553

[Darkness_demoN]

I think is better way to add option to create menu ( with some options ) and leave to a users ( admins ) to create their own

[Master_Cylinder]

I think is better way to add option to create menu ( with some options ) and leave to a users ( admins ) to create their own

That's not a bad idea, I like to give admins options, but a default menu might be good too.

[Darkness_demoN]

When you install phpbb you will get defult menu, then when you go to Admin Panel you will have ability to change ( remove menu, add menu, edint defult menu, etc. ). I thik this will be great