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[request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
Something that comes up a lot when turning sites over to clients is the navigation menu.
I get a lot of requests to add/remove/reorder items in dropdown navigation. This invariably leads to at least partially hard-coded menus.
I know there are several techniques for creating dynamic menus – but none of them cover all the scenarios I encounter.
What I’d like to create is a “menu builder” tab for building complex navigation menus – something that is super easy to use and can be turned over to even the most non-tech client.
Think of it like a Frankensteining of adi_menu and stm_article_order (with a few extras).
(Both of those plugins are awesome – but not quite what I need.)
- Nest sections (assign parents) – same idea as <adi_menu>
- Exclude sections
- Include links to articles in the menu structure
- Drag/Drop the order of any and all of these items (including dovetailing articles and sub-sections). Probably using sortables from the jquery UI.
- output nested <ul>‘s for creating suckerfish-like dropdowns.
Here are some screenshots to help illustrate what I’m thinking
(layouts hi-jacked from adi_menu and stm_article_order):
These nested sections would then show in the section drop-down.
I have no idea if this is possible – but it never hurts to ask right?
I’ve got $150 towards making this happen – and I would hope there are some others that would jump in to contribute as well.
:)
—
Tom
Last edited by renobird (2009-02-02 18:24:57)
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#2 2009-02-02 19:27:23
- jelle
- Member
- Registered: 2006-06-07
- Posts: 165
Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
Yup….that’s exactly what I need for my txp projects. I’d contribute for the bounty for sure.
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
I’ll throw in $20 (poor)
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
I stumbled across this page that has a few decent demos of sortable nested lists.
I’m not a fan of the interface – I much prefer something like the mockup I posted above.
Just gathering reference material at this point.
Last edited by renobird (2009-02-03 03:30:25)
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
What about combining the articles and sections into one “palette”?
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#6 2009-02-03 07:36:44
- lee
- Member
- From: Normandy, France
- Registered: 2004-06-17
- Posts: 831
Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
I’m in for $30
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
Dale, Lee,
Thanks! Hopefully we can get this off the ground.
jm,
I think (but not totally sure) that we are talking about the same thing.
Basically, my first 2 screenshots would be in a tab called Navigation (or whatever).
The last one is just to show that there needs to be a visual representation of the hierarchy in the section dropdown.
I could be confused – did you mean something different?
—
T
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
It’d help if I made halfway-decent mockups. The “Items” column is a list of all the sections and those articles, and you would drag whatever ones you wanted over to the “Canvas”/menu. This would eliminate the need for an explicit exclude-checkbox and parent-select. So it is the same idea but with less form controls.
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
Ah.
I gotcha. If you’ve ever used Active Collab – that’s kind of how you add users to a project.
Not sure if that would get confusing if wanted to include articles in the menu (because I’d like to be able to re-order them as well).
Would articles be included in the “Items” list?
Last edited by renobird (2009-02-03 17:32:53)
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
Oh definitely – the canvas-menu should be sortable. In the “Items” column, you’d only be able to expand/collapse articles belonging to a section and drag items over to the canvas.
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
Sweet. That would be perfect.
How about injecting the section structure into the “section” drop down (minus the articles)?
I think I’ve read that can cause conflicts with sed_section_fields.
This is one of the reasons I can’t use adi_menu – the subsections aren’t represented in the dropdown – and it gets too confusing to turn over to clients.
Last edited by renobird (2009-02-03 17:50:15)
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
If the plugin loaded late (order >= 6), it could modify sed_section_fields’ output if necessary. It wouldn’t be too hard to display sections in the sort and nesting order.
(Not sure if I’m going to do this though.)
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Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
jm wrote
(Not sure if I’m going to do this though.)
I hear ya. You really should though… :)
If you don’t take it – then you are definitely helping whoever does.
Last edited by renobird (2009-02-03 18:30:39)
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#14 2009-02-03 22:06:58
- jelle
- Member
- Registered: 2006-06-07
- Posts: 165
Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
Wow…some very good ideas here. Hope someone steps up to do it.
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#15 2009-02-04 00:13:04
- gomedia
- Plugin Author
- Registered: 2008-06-01
- Posts: 1,373
Re: [request] Bounty: Ultimate Nav Menu Builder
Hi, everyone – I’m the author of adi_menu and I thought I’d have my tuppence worth!
One of the reasons I got fed up with cnk_section_tree was the conflict between it & sed_section_fields. From memory, it resulted in a blank Article Write page. As jm said, with the subsequent introduction of plugin load order in 4.0.7 this might not be a show stopper anymore.
I can see that people are keen on seeing the section hierarchy in the section dropdown and, I must admit I think it would be useful too, so I’ll have a fiddle & see what I can do for adi_menu. Don’t send any donations though because it’s not the whole of what you’re after (& besides I’ll probably “borrow” the code from somewhere else anyway)! No promises, but it might be a useful excercise. If all else fails I can always put in an Admin option to disable it!
With regards to the other requirement (jQuery drag & drop) – I’m not a Javascript expert, so I’m not your man for the sexy admin interface. Sorry. It’s a great idea though.
Having thought about what your requesting, let me play devil’s advocate for the moment, if I may:
- isn’t the “dynamic” aspect of the proposed plugin going to disappear as soon as sections/articles are ordered beyond what can be done automatically by code (e.g: alphabetical order; sections first, articles last; random)? By nailing things down in a very specific & unique way, won’t you just end up with a fancy way of defining a handcoded Form to generate a menu?
- I know with adi_menu & cnk_section_tree users are forced to pay a visit the Admin tab to assign parents, but generally when new sections or articles are added the plugin takes them on board & no operator intervention is required.
- one other possible issue is that because you’re taking specific control of the menu output away from the tag and effectively giving it to an Admin tab then having multiple menus on a page would be problematic. Would you have multiple Admin tab for multiple menus?
Good luck with your search for the ulitimate menu plugin.
All the best,
Adi
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