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Still no way to easily create navigation tabs


qscott86

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Navigation tabs is something that contains the board basic navigation and any hooks that you install that requires to be there.


Now the question is: What else should be there and who would needs it?



Well other things that could be there include links because anything else would be added automatically like hooks. So now we know that the only thing that could be there are links...something maybe like Social Engines and a drop down to Facebook, Twitter etc.


Now the point is that not all board admins will need this and thus it is better left to custom coding.



Why?



Because if you start providing a means to add as many menus/tabs as you want you start adding things that the basic boards do not need. Second, how do you deal with 20 tabs? Do they do in a second line? Are they replaced by a "more" button/drop down? If you start giving a way to mess with how many menus/tabs there are you will have people adding "About - Contact" and tons of other links to things unrelated to the forums and better left to the website part of it and not the forums navigation.



My 2 cents




Hmm, if you boards are what your community evolves I see your point and I possibly agree.

But for me (and my projects) the project's main-page, built with IP.Content. I want to have one common navigation through all the applications, so the user may intutional navigate trough all the different pages and applications. (Common "Look and feel")

Personally I don't want to have different skins or layouts for different applications, like having other menu-points or "tabs" with different links in different applications. Again "common look and feel".

For me it's important to reorder the elements, add some special links at some pages (at the end of the navigation) or even make a dropdown-menu with additional links that may interest my users.

For your questions, just look at other CMS like Drupal, Joomla, TYPO3, Contao or even Wordpress. They all have found solutions for them. And for "20 Tabs", these are very special cases and I don't think we need to discuss (or support the discussion) of problems that have not yet arised. Apart from that, one may style the navigation as now. So what if I would add "20 Tabs" now? :wink:
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This thread truly shows ungratefulness at its finest. If you don't want to spend money and you don't want do it yourself don't expect anything to get done. In the time that you sat here complaining on the forums you could have coded it yourself. Not everything is going to be spoon fed to you. Welcome to the real world.




This post shows selfishness at its finest. It works for you so other's suggestions obviously have no merit. Duh.
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Addons - paid or not - are not an acceptable solution for obvious software shortcomings. Yes, we should be able to add/edit main menu items.




what you see as a shortcoming i see it as something i do not need.
So now the question is: How do you rate your needs versus others'? The naming of custom navigation menus is something not part of the basic setup of a forum software as I explained before. It is analog to requiring all manufacturers of cars to provide one of those attachments in the back of a car because one day you may need to tow another car. Well that piece is not needed for most car owners so it can be added if needed by the owner on their own accord.

Since the menus would have to link mostly to places outside the board that is why you will need to code them manually.

I am willing to be the devil advocate here but show me why it is that difficult to manually add one <li> to the navigation header and why most admins would need a custom option in the ACP instead.
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what you see as a shortcoming i see it as something i do not need.


So now the question is: How do you rate your needs versus others'? The naming of custom navigation menus is something not part of the basic setup of a forum software as I explained before. It is analog to requiring all manufacturers of cars to provide one of those attachments in the back of a car because one day you may need to tow another car. Well that piece is not needed for most car owners so it can be added if needed by the owner on their own accord.



Since the menus would have to link mostly to places outside the board that is why you will need to code them manually.



I am willing to be the devil advocate here but show me why it is that difficult to manually add one <li> to the navigation header and why most admins would need a custom option in the ACP instead.




Actually your analogy is completely inappropriate as it is a pretty simple matter to add options to the ACP - you do it one time and its done. A car change is an ongoing cost in every unit.

The ACP is full of options I don't use but I respect that others may use them. Making the main nav easier to update should be a simple implementation that would likely be used by a high percentage of users. So it makes sense.
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IPB is not a cms, you are comparing different things. IP Content is a cms. IPB Forum is a forum software not a cms



IPS Suite is a community content suite and the difference from a CMS is really just semantic. To give IPS a pass on it's shortcomings because the core suite code is in the forum package really doesn't make any sense at all.
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IPB is not a cms, you are comparing different things. IP Content is a cms. IPB Forum is a forum software not a cms




Actually, while IPB might not be a CMS -- the entire IPB system (including forums, IP.content, gallery etc) is really built into one framework. IP.content should hardly be called a CMS either.
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While I agree that IP.C isn't like regular CMS, it really is a CMS. It's a system that lets you manage content - such as pages, blocks, etc. So in that sense it really is a CMS. But I know IPS refrain from calling it that since people have certain.. expectations from a "CMS".

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IPS Suite is a community content suite and the difference from a CMS is really just semantic. To give IPS a pass on it's shortcomings because the core suite code is in the forum package really doesn't make any sense at all.




The difference is not just semantic and we're NOT talking about the suite but about the Forums part only...focus people. Whether the whole suite is considered a CMS is not the issue here.

About the topic at hand, there are NO shortcomings in the current 3.2 in regards to not having a menu manager for navigation...why? because it is not needed in the core. If it had been required at the core many admins like us would have posted dozens of pages and posts about it in the last few years. I don t remember seeing many thread requiring to have a menu manager in the ACP...why? because most people are able to open the header and paste a line of code like

1) open header
2) paste <a href="link"><li>New Tab</li></a> where needed
3) profit

The team time is better devoted to fixing current known bugs instead of trying to add functionality for admins who are CSS challenged imo. But hey that s my opinion I could be wrong.

When you request features to be added you need to take into account the opposite opinion and make a case for it. Just saying that a feature should be there is not a strong argument. If you guys want to keep this discussion going then please tell me how you are supposed to plan for people who will want to have 20 tabs in the navigation on top of hooks and basic navigation. Show us a mockup of how you are planning to deal with this situation which is the first thing I pointed out. If you make a menu manager you need now to think about how to deal with people who are going to break the navigation.

So how do you fix that?
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The difference is not just semantic and we're NOT talking about the suite but about the Forums part only...focus people. Whether the whole suite is considered a CMS is not the issue here.



About the topic at hand, there are NO shortcomings in the current 3.2 in regards to not having a menu manager for navigation...why? because it is not needed in the core. If it had been required at the core many admins like us would have posted dozens of pages and posts about it in the last few years. I don t remember seeing many thread requiring to have a menu manager in the ACP...why? because most people are able to open the header and paste a line of code like



1) open header


2) paste <a href="link"><li>New Tab</li></a> where needed


3) profit



The team time is better devoted to fixing current known bugs instead of trying to add functionality for admins who are CSS challenged imo. But hey that s my opinion I could be wrong.



When you request features to be added you need to take into account the opposite opinion and make a case for it. Just saying that a feature should be there is not a strong argument. If you guys want to keep this discussion going then please tell me how you are supposed to plan for people who will want to have 20 tabs in the navigation on top of hooks and basic navigation. Show us a mockup of how you are planning to deal with this situation which is the first thing I pointed out. If you make a menu manager you need now to think about how to deal with people who are going to break the navigation.



So how do you fix that?




But if there are a lot of people doing that change, then why not include it as a feature instead?
I can agree that the feature does not belong in the forum part since you don't need other "pages" for the forum.

However, I do think the feature should be added in IP.C. But that's my personal opinion.

Regarding the many links, that problem already exists today. How does it look if you edit in 20 links in the header-HTML? You can already "break" the navigation. That's a lame argument. If people are stupid and seriously think they can fit 20 links in that small bar they can already do it today so it's really no difference with a navigation-manager.
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The difference is not just semantic and we're NOT talking about the suite but about the Forums part only...focus people. Whether the whole suite is considered a CMS is not the issue here.



About the topic at hand, there are NO shortcomings in the current 3.2 in regards to not having a menu manager for navigation...why? because it is not needed in the core. If it had been required at the core many admins like us would have posted dozens of pages and posts about it in the last few years. I don t remember seeing many thread requiring to have a menu manager in the ACP...why? because most people are able to open the header and paste a line of code like



1) open header


2) paste <a href="link"><li>New Tab</li></a> where needed


3) profit



The team time is better devoted to fixing current known bugs instead of trying to add functionality for admins who are CSS challenged imo. But hey that s my opinion I could be wrong.



When you request features to be added you need to take into account the opposite opinion and make a case for it. Just saying that a feature should be there is not a strong argument. If you guys want to keep this discussion going then please tell me how you are supposed to plan for people who will want to have 20 tabs in the navigation on top of hooks and basic navigation. Show us a mockup of how you are planning to deal with this situation which is the first thing I pointed out. If you make a menu manager you need now to think about how to deal with people who are going to break the navigation.



So how do you fix that?




No, you're absolutely incorrect as may or may not be usual. There have been several threads requesting this feature. IT should be an available option regardless of which IPB program you are using. It absolutely is a large shortcoming and you can't speak for "most people" who you claim edit the code. It's not a matter of being "CSS challenged" -- it should be a standard feature no matter what. If it's so easy to change it in the code, then why not make a feature in the ACP just as one can easily add a new forum, they should be able to add new navigation links. There's absolutely no excuse. It should be intuitive to add navigation links - it shouldn't require changing the code.

That last question is silly -- you could easily set a limit as to how many links you can add or add additional rows or allow for sublinks.
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I only manage parts of my project and my developer does most of the coding but I believe this is true: with the current system to change the order of the main navigation items (gallery, forum etc), or to remove items from the nav is quite a bit more complicated than just editing the template. This alone would be enough reason for an improved, ACP based solution.

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words



People shouldn't have to have a "strong argument" to suggest a feature. We all pay for Invision products, so we're all entitled to our own opinions. If you don't think that a navigation system needs to be added—great. Obviously, a lot of others (myself included) do, so there's no reason you should discredit them for that opinion.

I think that a navigation management system is crucial, for all of the reasons pointed out above. I've spent hours trying to add links and have them display as active on the pages they are active on. It's not simple. Though YOU may not use a nav management system, I certainly will, and I'm sure others will also.
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People shouldn't have to have a "strong argument" to suggest a feature. We all pay for Invision products, so we're all entitled to our own opinions. If you don't think that a navigation system needs to be added—great. Obviously, a lot of others (myself included) do, so there's no reason you should discredit them for that opinion.



I think that a navigation management system is crucial, for all of the reasons pointed out above. I've spent hours trying to add links and have them display as active on the pages they are active on. It's not simple. Though YOU may not use a nav management system, I certainly will, and I'm sure others will also.




What Kyle said ^^
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IPB is not a cms, you are comparing different things. IP Content is a cms. IPB Forum is a forum software not a cms





If you had actually read my whole posts you would have seen that I stated this myself. I want my users to have a common look and feel through all applications. I don't care if this is included in IP.Content or IP.Board, I just would love to see it happen. Apart from that I didn't want to make a new thread (as there have been numerous of those about a flexible-ACP-solution for navigation-editing)
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The difference is not just semantic and we're NOT talking about the suite but about the Forums part only...focus people.




No, you are alone talking about the forums only. There are many things in the core that need to be in the core for some reason. Apart from that, I still don't care if this is implemented into IP.Board or IP.Content, I just want to be able to use it across all the different applications.
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It is not about having "strong arguments" it is about understanding that in a dev house you have to have priorities because your time is limited.
In order to find 'what is needed' and 'what would be nice' you have people who make decisions based on their knowledge and experience of issues.

Ultimately ALL suggestions are good and ALL suggestions should be implemented when you think about it since they improve things. If that was the case, apps would never see the light of day. Let me try to explain this in another way.

When you are in a dev situation you have to think further than simply the creation of the feature. You must also think forward ie does this addition to the code create potential problems and what could they be? My GF is a wow dev. For years of following what she does I learned that even the single change can have massive repercussions that coders never think about at first. With all this said when I hear about a 'feature' to add my first reaction is always: How can this break things?

And this question applies here. How would having a menu editor possibly break things?

Well in that case you are faced with two types of people: Coders who know what they are doing and those who would use the menu editor.
The ones who know what they are doing would develop on a test server and add their own menu code and what they would add would be what they need and nothing else. The changes they would make could be reverted easily. Then on the other end you have people who would only use the menu manager. They would be able to reorder tabs and add as amny as they would want and that is where things can break as most of these people would probably do changes on their live board. That is why I was giving the example of someone adding tons of other menus like Contact Us - About Us - Advertize - Promotions - Donate - Services etc... You can see this quickly growing with a lot of tabs.

As soon as this is enabled, the same people will ask for drop downs instead of tabs as the number of tabs will only keep on growing. Now from a small number of tabs you have transitioned to a lot of drop downs. The original purpose of the navigation is now gone, there are so many options that you need to mouseover all the drop downs to find what you are looking for so you ask for the drop downs to be replaced with a mega-menu etc... and it keeps changing, growing and be prone to errors and breaking the skin. I have seen it happen countless of times with the many projects I have been part of. Anyway, in the end, I support the idea to have an easier way to manage menus but I know that for IPB this will open the door to more support questions and ultimately more work as opposed to locking all admins with a basic template/functionality that can be improved with small changes to the header or custom skins.

Think about it this way...if you want IPB to make a menu editor like a Wordpress menu editor then why not also ask them to do a menu editor for the Black bar on top of the screen? why not also a breadcrumb editor? Again I am not trying to be confrontational but to provide argumentation to the issue. I do not care one way or the other as IPB decides what is best for them, I am only trying to further the discussions by providing example and hopefully making you see further then simply 'adding a feature we want'

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Your argument is illogical, Christophe. You're saying that since the feature could be abused by adding too many menus, it shouldn't be added at all. That brand-new Visual Skin Editor will no doubt produce some hideous skins, but is that the fault of the developers? No, it's the fault of the site owners who decided they wanted cyan text on a neon green background. It's still a great feature, even though not everyone will use it as intended.

Moreover, I don't understand your "time is limited" argument. Invision sets deadlines for itself, so really, they have all the time they want. (I believe there was a discussion awhile back of people wanting to change IPS's slogan to "when it's ready".) Their only true goal is to stay ahead of their competition, and quite frankly, they're way ahead of that game. So I'm positive that if the developers thought that a navigation management system would be put to good use, they'd spend the time adding one.

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With all due respect look and feel has nothing to do with the issue we are discussing.

ISSUE: Some people want a menu editor because it would make their customizations easier to do.

I argued that there is no need for one as you may make changes yourself and that providing one would open the door to broken navigations and would need to be updated to increase the number of options it provides increasing the potential number of things that can break. As far as the css editor is concerned, you can only make changes the css look and feel with it ie not break the page/navigation unless you go directly in the code. The fact that some changes may look ugly is not the same thing as having a navigation that now is on two lines instead of one.

In order to deal with potential two lines navigations you would need the code to dynamically be able to recognize that the skin is fixed and calculate the length of the menus and find that it is wrapping on two lines and instead provide a More > drop down menu with all the other tabs you would like to have in it...but then again as I mentioned this opens the door to more issues.It would also solve the two lines issue with forcing a limited number of tabs...again opening more issues than solving.

Adding even 5 tabs would break the navigation in fixed width layouts that have many hooks.

Quote: So I'm positive that if the developers thought that a navigation management system would be put to good use, they'd spend the time adding one.
Exactly and since this has not been done yet seem to say that IPB doesn t think its warranted.

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I too would have to agree with what Kyle is trying to say. Christophe, you don't notice a pattern here in this thread? People are 'Liking' what Kyle and others are saying, yet I don't see any 'likes' on your replies. Why? Because the majority of us agree on his point of views. You keep writing all these long posts, but basically are repeating the same thing over and over again. At some point I stopped reading your replies because one, as I mentioned, you keep repeating your point that nobody agrees with. And two, quite frankly, I get bored of reading posts that long. You keep trying to make your argument as if everyone who will use this feature will be stupid enough to abuse it and put countless tabs and thus create "broken" navigations. First of all, you don't know that as a fact. Why not them try it out and see if it does "break" the navigation or create some disastrous results as you keep trying to point out. If an actual IPS developer can reply in this thread to verify what you're saying is true, then perhaps I'll believe it. Until that happens, I'm going to continue to support this suggestion.

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With all due respect look and feel has nothing to do with the issue we are discussing.


I wasn't saying that the Visual Skin Editor had anything to do with the current suggestion—I was just using it as an example to point out your logical fallacy.

Quite honestly, I've said everything about this feature that I want to say. Not to oversimplify, but I see our debate a little like this:

You're arguing that this thread's suggestion shouldn't be considered because I'm arguing that And considering that you wouldn't have to use this feature even if it WAS implemented, it's rather pointless to continue arguing against it.
  1. [*]It isn't necessary [*]It would be difficult to implement, and [*]People could abuse it.

    1. [*]
Many IPS features aren't "necessary", but they improve the product [*]You shouldn't be concerned with how difficult it is to implement; that's a problem to be solved by the developers, not by you, and [*]Many IPS features can be abused (HTML editing, anyone?), so again, this is a non-issue.

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Yes there is no point keeping on arguing on this. It was not my intent to drag it.

Personally I don t care one way or another. If IPB believes it is warranted to add a menu manager they will add one and I will be happy with it.
I only provide comments to entertain the discussion not to win an argument.

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