Page Layout with Navigation Sidebar

See also

• SimplifyingBeWelcome (micha's drafts)
• NavigationDropdowns

In an attempt to simplify the BW layout and reduce the domination of the big orange teaser, while still providing all essential navigation elements, we think of a sidebar navigation as one possible solution.

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from SimplifyingBeWelcome :

a) navigation sidebar (our sidebar does not count, because it appears as part of the content, and not as something outside meant for navigation).
Examples: gmail, studivz, a big number of major sites.
Issues:
(-) Consumes horizontal space: Sidebars reduce the page width we can use for content. This is ok for pages with one column of text, because smaller columns are easier to read anyway. But any time we want to use more than one column for the content, or we want to show big things such as a map, we want all the horizontal space we get.
(+) has more space for text, links and even images, than a horizontal menu has.
(+) can be nicely separated into several sections (like the "widgets" in wordpress sidebar)

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What goes in the sidebar?

The idea of this sidebar is global navigation.

A box with "personal links"

When logged out, this will be a login/signup widget.

When logged in, it will show links to my messages, my profile, my pictures, my preferences, edit my profile, etc. And it will tell: "You are logged in as <username+picture>" (this is important, because more than one person may share the computer, and all of them can have different accounts).

Search box with options

By default, it will go to people quicksearch, but it has options for groups search, forums search, locaton search, multisearch.. (options should not clutter)

Community Links

These go to forum, galleries, etc.

Help / About / Feedback..

All of this..

Admin Links

Or "volunteer", as we usually say.

Information, additional stuff

Who of my friends is online? How many people are logged in? Latest messages in the forum / my groups / mail?

How is this different from the sidebar we already have?

With our current layout, the sidebar will always appear as part of the page content, because it is "under the roof" of the main navigation menu and teaser. The new sidebar will not be considered as part of the page content, but as a global element that looks the same on every page.

On which pages does the sidebar appear?

Either on all pages, or on those which have enough horizontal space. For instance, profiles and map search will be happier to use all the horizontal space for content (two text columns, or a lot of space for the map). For these, we can use other solutions like NavigationDropdowns .

Page-specific Sidebar links

I think these should go in a separate sidebar that is visually attached to the page content, to separate it from the global navigation links.

Comments

And when we scroll down the content, the navigation sidebar stays visible? That sounds fine. We could probably fit some submenus also:

Home
My messages
My profile
Forum
Groups
Search
"a searchbox"

When I click on "My profile", my profile appears and the bar becomes

Home
My messages
My profile
-Recent visitors
-Preferences
-Edit
-See comments
Forum
Groups
Search
"a searchbox"

It seems to me simpler code, so less bugs, than tabs.

So far, I find the current navigation perfectible. It would be nice to inject some consistency and ergonomy. -- sitarane (Julien)

PS: wiki formatting piss me off!