Sidebar vs dropdown (hamburger) menu button placement

[jesus2099]

As the original topic is closed:

Try out the new sidebar and notification menus!

We’ve been working on some significant new navigation features, and we’re now at a point where we’d love to start getting more feedback from you! Have and idea or question about these features? Come hang out with us in the #sidebar-feedback chat channel or start a new topic tagged with #sidebar. Over the years, Discourse has grown to serve a larger set of communication and collaboration needs for diverse groups within the communities that rely upon the platform. Many …

Let me make here my 2 remarks about the new sidebar navigation, after having used it for a while:

In my opinion, there are 2 regressions:

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(Hamburger) menu button

A UX regression.

I often click this sidebar (hamburger) menu button instead of the site logo (to get back to my homepage).
It makes targeting the topmost used-to-be-leftmost big header homepage link logo, more difficult.

• Sidebar (hamburger) menu button is in the way of the homepage link (logo used to be leftmost icon)
• Header drop down (hamburger) menu button is appropriately shown with all the other such buttons (search and user menu) (and also where it used to be, for what it’s worth)

Panel appearance

Just a personal visual remark.

Not really troublesome when you click the (hamburger) menu button on purpose but especially annoying when you click it by mistake, as described in previous issue.

• Sidebar opens/closes in a clumsy fashion, making full content scroll left to right and vice versa*
• Header drop down opens/closes in an OK fashion

* It’s really impressive to be able to do that scrolling panels in JavaScript, but it does not look and feel good, IMO.

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I hope the legacy header dropdown menu button will not disappear.

[mcwumbly (Dave McClure)]

@jesus2099

Sidebar opens/closes in a clumsy fashion, making full content scroll left to right and vice versa*

We have been exploring changes to our default theme that would avoid this, but rolling them out widely is tricky as we need to account for how this may break people’s existing themes. But you can take the Default (full-width) theme for a spin here on meta via the theme switcher to get a sense for where we may be headed.

@jesus2099

I hope the legacy header dropdown menu button will not disappear .

We will be removing it in the near future, after some final issues with themes are sorted out.

@jesus2099

I often click this sidebar (hamburger) menu button instead of the site logo (to get back to my homepage). It makes targeting the topmost used-to-be-leftmost big header homepage link logo, more difficult.

This is helpful feedback - certainly worth us keeping an eye on and evaluating how widespread this kind of issue is for people.

[denvergeeks]

@jesus2099

I often click this sidebar (hamburger) menu button instead of the site logo (to get back to my homepage).
It makes targeting the topmost used-to-be-leftmost big header homepage link logo, more difficult.

• Sidebar (hamburger) menu button is in the way of the homepage link (logo used to be leftmost icon)

The sidebar toggle button could be re-located to inside (at the top of) the sidebar menu, as I suggested in this recent post.

I suppose a Theme Component could provide this option?

Anyone off the top know of a TC I could learn from that re-locates buttons?

[jesus2099]

I keep the sidebar closed as this huge text column is distracting.
I would like the menu icon to be formed on the right side with search and user, like before.

And a pop-up menu, LOL.

My use of Discourse forums is:

• Homepage = Latest
• Many muted tags, categories and users
• I only use:
  • This Latest topic list
  • The topmost and used-to-be-leftmost logo button to go back to Latest, when needed

[jesus2099]

By the way, the button placement remained the same as it was in mobile view, which is great:

The menu button is between the search and the user button.
The return-to-homepage logo button (the most often used) is alone on the top left, for easy chick without precise targeting needed.