[katello-devel] Navigation, Organization Switcher, and Utilities Design Enhancements

[Mike McCune]

On 03/15/2013 12:17 PM, Kyle Baker wrote:
> The design rational as well as high fidelity mock-ups are available on the Katello wiki - https://fedorahosted.org/katello/wiki/Navigation%20Enhancements
>

thanks for the fresh perspective on Katello's nav, some comments:

* We lose the ability to see where you are in the 2nd level nav now, so 
if you are in 'Content' you have no idea where within Content that you 
are.  How it is now:

http://mmccune.fedorapeople.org/scratch/katello-nav1.png

but with your redesign, as with Foreman you lose your 2nd level nav when 
you are within any given page.  I think the 2nd level nav is valuable 
and prefer we don't go back to a nav structure that doesn't indicate 
where you are within the site.

* This doesn't address one of the main issues we had with the Settings 
(site wide) pages:

You don't have any context in the nav when you are viewing a Settings 
page.  The nav remains un-highlighted.  The current setup we have with 
the strange "Back" button does try to address this, although in a very 
ineffective way, you do know *where* you are within the settings pages. 
  Perhaps I'm getting too hung up on this issue and all we ever really 
need to indicate in the navigation is where you are only at the top 
level (1st level nav highlighting only)...

* It looks like you took Foreman's navigation style and applied it to 
Katello, negating Alchemy, which Foreman just worked to integrate into 
their UI?


The sticking point for me is that I think of a navigation widget as a 
way to make it easy to know where you are now and also what else is 
available near by.

So perhaps instead of doing the vertical drop lists for each 1st level 
nav we still offer a 2nd level nav that is 'sticky' when you are in a 
page but adopt the full-width navigation style you are offering here.

I'm still not entirely sure how to solve the crux of the issue around 
providing context when you are in a Settings page and continuing to 
support the stick 1st and 2nd level navigation widget.

Mike

-- 
Mike McCune
mmccune AT redhat.com
Red Hat Engineering       | Portland, OR
Systems Management        | 650-254-4248