History: Navbar improvement ideas
Source of version: 2
Copy to clipboard
Bootstrap has a mobile-first philosophy, so things are built to be usable on small devices first and then scaled up/modified to work well on larger displays.
Tiki comes from the other direction, made for pc displays. The legacy site header carries that baggage.
Goal: Have a useful and attractive site header/navbar that adapts well to all screen sizes, and is as flexible as possible in accommodating content of the site.
Approaches:
* Use Bootstrap code (or equivalent) as closely as possible.
** It'll scale naturally for all displays (plus).
** This limits large-display content - how to have banner ads, non-menu/search/login content, etc.(minus).
* Use legacy Tiki site header modules, etc.
** This displays fine in medium (maybe) and large screens.
** This is almost unusable in small displays as the site header take up the whole screen.
* Coping strategies
** Use Bootstrap visibility classes to display modules appropriately for each screen size ([http://getbootstrap.com/css/#responsive-utilities-classes]).
*** Mostly this is to hide non-responsive modules in small views (plus).
*** This means extra work at the admin-modules stage, and it's not documented yet (minus).
** Take advantage of the pagetop module zone to place a small-device menu that's hidden in larger views (currently in use at themes.to.o).
*** Provides an escape from what could be a mess in the collapsed site header.
*** This means making a duplicate menu and adding it in admin-menus.
** ??
* Next steps
** Make navbar with "super-module fluffy" custom module
*** Should produce the desired collapsible header (plus).
*** Why is a profile/custom module needed to provide a basic feature? (minus)
** Should alternative menu display ideas be introduced (slidebars -[http://plugins.adchsm.me/slidebars/], etc.)?
** Is there a way to revise the code to get both a proper collapsing menu in small screens and the legacy site header contents/appearance in desktop view?