Adminstration menu: leave only two of the top-level navigation items expanded

[kasparsd]

The only disadvantage of vertical (crazyhorse) main-nav is that it can get enormously long (especially with many plugins installed) and require a lot of scrolling to actually get to the menu item required.

It might be useful to automatically collapse certain top-level menu items if more than three (for example) menu items are expanded.

Added javascript stores all of the opened menu items into an array. When the number of items in array exceeds certain number, it automatically collapses the menu that was saved first (pops it from the array as well) and adds the expanded menu id to the end of that array. This action is bind to top-level expanding/collapsing.

The concept is similar to the one used here: ​http://konstruktors.com/examples/wordpress-dashboard/04/

[kasparsd]

Patch against revision 8954

[kasparsd]

Modified common.js

[azaozz]

Don't think this is a good idea. Why preventing the users from opening all top parents? Almost all users would want to fully expand the menu when looking for something, auto-closing would frustrate them.

[kasparsd]

Replying to azaozz:

Don't think this is a good idea.

Did you try it?

[DD32]

I tried the version on ​http://konstruktors.com/examples/wordpress-dashboard/04/design.htm# and while it works nicely.. I dont really like it myself, I see no reason why a user shouldnt have all of the menu's open, afterall, it just means the browser scrolls more.

Most people are only going to leave 2 or 3 sections open, the rest are going to normally be closed i would expect though.

[azaozz]

Replying to kasparsd:

Did you try it?

Of course. It does what it says, sometimes leaving 2 parents open, sometimes 3. The sliding effect makes it look nice, but usability-wise it prevents the user from seeing all submenus at once (even if some scrolling is involved), so when looking for a submenu, instead of preventing clicks, it forces the user to click a lot more to be able to compare the different sections.

[janeforshort]

We're pretty set on letting users decide which menus they have open for themselves. I suggest you create a plugin with your proposed function of only opening two at a time. There are probably plenty of people who would like it, but it's not in line with our core goal of letting the user control the interface.