Convert metanav into a more sensible toolbarish thing [PATCH]

[lkraav <leho@…>]

This is a work in progress. Problems addressed:

• Additional important project metadata (in this case, team/people info) needs a place
• Metanav, which mostly has rarely-used items, doesn't need to be visually long and always visible
• Search box on top of two menu rows wastes vertical space, which we nearly always have less of compared to horizontal (exception being rare portrait monitors)
• Gravatar support for some human touch with graceful fallback to default text "logged in" info behavior

[lkraav <leho@…>]

v1 screenshot

[lkraav <leho@…>]

Discussion targets:

• does this direction have a chance of landing in core?
• improvement suggestions

[lkraav <leho@…>]

Should included the example screenshot in previous comment

[lkraav <leho@…>]

While I started this on top of 1.0.2dev, the patches apply cleanly on top of 1.1.1dev as well, except for a trivial jquery-ui css conflict. I've switched to developing on top of 1.1, next round will be based on that.

[Christian Boos]

Replying to lkraav <leho@…>:

• Additional important project metadata (in this case, team/people info) needs a place

When we'll have it, yes.

• Metanav, which mostly has rarely-used items, doesn't need to be visually long and always visible

I think it's OK. Perhaps it could be made less prominent in the default setup, a bit greyed liked here on t.e.o.

• Search box on top of two menu rows wastes vertical space, which we nearly always have less of compared to horizontal (exception being rare portrait monitors)

We need a bigger search box, right.

• Gravatar support for some human touch with graceful fallback to default text "logged in" info behavior

See also the idea of a user "color" (ticket:9282#comment:27).

[lkraav <leho@…>]

Currently, main attraction of this work is the cheap (as in non-costly codewise) and efficient, CSS-only conversion of metanav into a well-functioning drop-down menu. Thing to do with drop-downs is touch compatibility analysis, though. I haven't tried it out on my various touch devices yet, myself.

Re metanav visibility - I am still advocating a less-clutter approach in the sense that things are just easier or less tiring on the mind when there's less options visible throughout the work process. I'm certain there's plenty of usability studies to back this up, and if core so requires, I can go find some data since I think it has enough value to spend that time.

Whether Trac desperately needs it or not, well that's another topic. Here, I am speaking as an operator of environments that has a lot of non-technical, or… let's say "business" :), users.

[lkraav <leho@…>]

Rebased on top of current trunk /cc @rjollos

[Ryan J Ollos]

Seems like there are some improvements here worth pursuing if your willing to iterate on the patch. I like the metanav menu, larger main navigation bar and gravatar.

Some initial comments:

• quicksearch.png seems to be missing.
• When logged out, gravatar-mystery-man.png.jpg displays as a missing image. I think we should just hide the gravatar box when logged out.
• The metanav items seem to be skipped when tabbing.
• New css classes should be prefixed with trac-.
• For the get_gravatar option, we should consider future extensibility for other providers and also move the option to the Chrome class.
• The team features need to be deferred for now.

Related comment: the biggest "easy" visual improvement to Trac in my opinion would be a bigger main navigation bar, something like ​here.

[Ryan J Ollos]

We might be able to move forward on some of the improvements suggested in this ticket if the items in comment:7 are addressed, however the patches are incomplete and nothing can be done at this time.