Last modified: 2010-05-15 15:33:56 UTC
The current navigation bar only contains a list of links of sinle level. It would be much better if we can provide navigation bar with multiple levels. For example, the if users want to access one page in "special pages", with multiple- level navigation bar, they could just point their mouse cursors to "special pages" in the toolbox for a while and all links within "special pages" would popup to be selected. Users could save a lot of time by introducing even one level of navigation bar. And saving time is quite something for everybody I think. A good example for what I want is located here: http://www.intel.com/software/products/index.htm Please try to use the navigation bar in above page. It also provides a hint how to organize our current long list of other languages links for a page into a much shorter one.
I'm going to mark this as WONTFIX. Huge complicated hierarchical navigation bars are really, really, really annoying, and I sincerely hope we can avoid the temptation to make things overcomplicated in this way.
Well, I would say anything described with "Huge complicated" is annoying. I totally agree with you with this. But a two or at most three level navigation bars should be a better thing for users. And it is not overcompilicated for sure. I insisit on letting average users vote for existing bugs for its severities including this one. And that would make more sense than arguments between several people here. I changed it to Reopen for 2 level navigation bar. Not the "overcomplicated" Intel one. (In reply to comment #1) > I'm going to mark this as WONTFIX. Huge complicated hierarchical navigation bars are really, really, really annoying, and I sincerely > hope we can avoid the temptation to make things overcomplicated in this way.
Can you please link an example of what you'd like? You are of course welcome to code up a custom skin that's as complex or simple as you like. As maintainers of a free software package our responsibility is the unpleasant one of sometimes saying "no" to keep the base distribution manageable. Please feel free to vote for the bug though; click the "Vote for this bug" link right above the comment box.
The example I already mentioned in this bug report: http://www.intel.com/software/products/index.htm It only contains 3 to 4 levels navigation bar and looks complicated at the first glance. I think 3 levels are quite enough for wikipedia. Thank you for you attention for this bug report. (In reply to comment #3) > Can you please link an example of what you'd like? > You are of course welcome to code up a custom skin that's as complex or simple as you like. As maintainers of a free software > package our responsibility is the unpleasant one of sometimes saying "no" to keep the base distribution manageable. > Please feel free to vote for the bug though; click the "Vote for this bug" link right above the comment box.
Well we're definitely not going to do something like the linked Intel site. Re-closing.
Oops. There is some misunderstanding here. I mentioned Intel site just for an example, not saying I want this and nothing else. And the tile is self-explained: a multiple level navigation bar. Not strictly saying we must use intel style. That is an implementation issue. The desired features from users are requirments. And how to exactly meet their requirments is implementation. There is always a gap between them. It is not proper to close a requirement because one implementation method is not desired I think. (In reply to comment #5) > Well we're definitely not going to do something like the linked Intel site. Re-closing.
To support a desire for this, do the following: 1. Discuss in the community (on meta or other places on the wiki) 2. Get a list of features which people want added to menu bars 3. Identify why it is not possible or not desirable to do them in a single link style, on the top or left of the page, where they work even for those who do not have javascript or have it turned off for security reasons. Once you have these done, with clear community support, it'll be time to visit bugzilla.
There are bad and good ways to do this. TikiWiki has a feature like that. You can see it at their homepage at http://tikiwiki.org/tiki-index.php This immediately confused the heck out of me whenever I visited a tiki site because I didn't know where to find the "Recent changes" link. Only now, after using tiki for a while in a project I'm involved with, I have actually become vaguely familiar with its navigational structure (which again is different from one wiki to the next). MediaWiki has a trademark set of links that are easy to find. Most installations use the same link titles for the basic functionality. You can use accesskeys or type-ahead find to navigate to the places you want to go (needless to say, none of these features works on the Intel site). However, the current special pages menu is awkward. "Special pages" is not descriptive, and frequent users will find the navigation to be cumbersome. Here I think a dynamic menu could be useful. Same for pages with more than n interlanguage links. It would be crucial that the menu works in older and text-based browsers (the Intel one works in links, not tested with older graphical browsers). If you want to pursue this further, please build at least a prototype based on the current Monobook skin. You don't need to know PHP, just get the HTML and CSS of a random wiki page and start tinkering.
(In reply to comment #4) > > Please feel free to vote for the bug though; click the "Vote for this bug" link right above > the comment box. Just to point out that BugZilla votes are more or less ignored on our implementation of it. I think the voting feature tends to be used more as a watchlist for bugs - and that's how I use it.
Reclosing. No new points have came up why this should be implemented since last closing.
