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

[Mike McCune]

On 03/18/2013 08:28 AM, Eric D Helms wrote:
>
>
>
> On Mon, Mar 18, 2013 at 11:12 AM, Mike McCune <mmccune at redhat.com
> <mailto:mmccune at redhat.com>> wrote:
>
>     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
>         <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
>     <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)...
>
>
> Looking back at this high fidelity mocks, there appear to be a few
> states of the nav missing that were in some initial wireframes.  For
> example, when on the settings page , that menu item would be highlighted
> just like the rest.  There was an idea of doing the same style sub-nav
> we have now but anchored underneath the header.  As well as pop-up
> notifications becoming a similarly anchored entity that appear below the
> header.  The questions I think becomes:
>
> - are we just stacking too much in the header at that point?
> - is there a simpler way to reflect where you are currently? Maybe
> indicating within the active tab the sub-tab.
> - most applications I can think of that display your current
> sub-navigation position use a left hand menu, should we think about that
> as an addition?
>
>

good to hear that the mocks were missing a piece I pointed out above. 
Perhaps a left/right nav would be better instead of taking up the 
vertical space required for our current 2nd level nav.


>     * 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?
>
>
> I can at least speak to this point in so much that some of the changes
> here reflect a number of conversations and design discussions that we
> have been working towards in Alchemy.  The priority always got pushed
> back by other work, but the slimmer, more reactive header has been a
> goal and whatever the final work presented here would be translated over
> to Alchemy.

cool, good to hear.

Mike