[BZ] MenuFlex 2.0.0

[bzcomputers]

bzcomputers submitted a new resource:

[BZ] MenuFlex - Enhance your XenForo menus with customizable flair and function.

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MenuFlex boosts XenForo’s navigation with three practical features: Open Menus On Hover, Tiered Menus, and Font Awesome Menu Icons.

It was designed to improve menu function and add visual appeal. It can be managed completely through the Admin Control Panel (ACP) with ease. MenuFlex is great for admins...

Read more about this resource...

 

[Alpha1]

Does this use the sublinks that addons add to the secondary navigation bar? Are these added to the drop down menu?

It would be nice to have a mega menu option, so that we can display more links without the need for a scrollbar.

 

[bzcomputers]

Does this use the sublinks that addons add to the secondary navigation bar? Are these added to the drop down menu?

It would be nice to have a mega menu option, so that we can display more links without the need for a scrollbar.

We currently only apply the Tiered/Nested Menus (when turned on) to the Main Menu and its submenus. All section links and their submenu options do already appear in the Main Menu within the nested tiers. The section links have always been a duplication of what is already available within the Main Menu. Currently the separate Section Links submenu (positioned beneath the Main Menu) is still "flat", XenForo default view. This may change in a future release.

 

[Alpha1]

IMHO the default tabs with secondary navigation links become a mess when a lot of add-ons are installed. Members get confused and just ignore it all. A good mega menu with the secondary links could resolve this issue.

 

[bzcomputers]

I completely agree that menu links a user has to scroll to get to is a link that is much less likely to be visited.

I'm not a fan of Mega Menus myself, but I do see a place for them for a small percentage of sites. I feel most XenForo sites are well served with either the current XenForo flat menus as long as their menu options are limited, otherwise I feel MenuFlex's nested menus option will help a lot on sites with more expansive menus get deeper links visited more often.

XenForo Flat Menu:




MenuFlex Tiered with Icons:

 

[Alpha1]

I've just installed your menu addon on my staging site and it surely resolves some of the vertical dropdown clutter. That's really nice!

But it doesn't resolve the horizontal clutter that exists when the number of main tabs is wider than the width of the screen. In your video you show a site that has 7 main tabs (5 addons). My site has 16 main tabs (13 addons). At such point users have to scroll horizontally many times to get to the tabs and its subnavigation. People just don't do that, so part of the navigation stays hidden and unused.
Please consider to install 5 more major addons on a staging / demo site in order to see the issue.

I'd love a menu that has a solution for the horizontal clutter and can make a large site accessible. A possible solution would be to be able to place multiple addons under a multi-columned dropdown: a mega-menu. But any other solution would also be welcome.

 

[bzcomputers]

I've just installed your menu addon on my staging site and it surely resolves some of the vertical dropdown clutter. That's really nice!

But it doesn't resolve the horizontal clutter that exists when the number of main tabs is wider than the width of the screen. In your video you show a site that has 7 main tabs (5 addons). My site has 16 main tabs (13 addons). At such point users have to scroll horizontally many times to get to the tabs and its subnavigation. People just don't do that, so part of the navigation stays hidden and unused.
Please consider to install 5 more major addons on a staging / demo site in order to see the issue.

I'd love a menu that has a solution for the horizontal clutter and can make a large site accessible. A possible solution would be to be able to place multiple addons under a multi-columned dropdown: a mega-menu. But any other solution would also be welcome.

Wow, 16 main tabs - can't say I've seen a site with that many. I can see why you're looking for a different solution than what stock XenForo offers.

Yes, the tiered menus this addon creates still uses the horizontal scroll built into XenForo. This was done on purpose so that when vertical scrolling on a site the Main Menu and nav-opposite (where your account menu, alerts, search, etc. exist) are always still visible and accessible at the top of screen no matter where you are on the page.

You do have an interesting case though, and I'd like to help if I can. I'm going to think on this for a bit and see if maybe I can come up with another option to incorporate into MenuFlex that can help those with 10+ main menu tabs. I'm sure there aren't a ton of you, but I guarantee you're not alone either.

 

[bzcomputers]

@Alpha1 made some progress on adding a "Mega Menu" option that works with the tiered menus. I've got a few other projects in the works right and am not sure when I'll be able to get back to it, and get at least a Beta out to you, but I just wanted you to know it's still in the works. Here is a little bit of what I've been working on...

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[Alpha1]

That would be a welcome enhancement. I'd love to be able to combine multiple tabs. For example we use @Naz his Tickets addon which adds 2 tabs for Helpdesk and Knowledge base, while our Wiki offers FAQ articles and XF Help pages are also related. I'd love one tab for Help and stick all of that under there.

We could do the same for other addons that offer related or somewhat similar content.

 

[bzcomputers]

That would be a welcome enhancement. I'd love to be able to combine multiple tabs. For example we use @Naz his Tickets addon which adds 2 tabs for Helpdesk and Knowledge base, while our Wiki offers FAQ articles and XF Help pages are also related. I'd love one tab for Help and stick all of that under there.

We could do the same for other addons that offer related or somewhat similar content.

The combining of Main Menu options into a single option could be done but I'd need a little more detail on your exact final menu layout.

New Custom Main Menu Option:
First Submenu Item: Original Main Menu Option 1 -> First Sub-Submenu Item: Main Menu Option 1 Submenu Options
Second Submenu Item: Original Main Menu Option 2 -> First Sub-Submenu Item: Main Menu Option 2 Submenu Options

-or- just all combined under the new option:
New Custom Main Menu Option:
First Submenu Item: Main Menu Option 1 Submenu Option 1
Second Submenu Item: Main Menu Option 1 Submenu Option 2
Third Submenu Item: Main Menu Option 1 Submenu Option 3
Fourth Submenu Item: Main Menu Option 2 Submenu Option 1
Fifth Submenu Item: Main Menu Option 2 Submenu Option 2

In all practicality and for best site performance this is likely best accomplished spending a couple minutes and just reorganizing your menu items. Doing it on every page load is likely just unnecessary overhead however small it might be.

 

[Alpha1]

I have 3 suggestions:

If the function 'Tiered/nested menus' is turned on then this nicely reduces clutter in the desktop menu and expands when clicked or hovered.
However, it doesn't effect the mobile off-canvas menu,
I'd love to be able to add new links into the menu in the locations freed up by nested menus. But on mobile nothing is freed up or uncluttered. The xf menu clutter problem is worse on mobile.

1. Please add a setting / function to have tiered menu on mobile as well.
2. It would be very nice to have a horizontal separator line between menu options.
3. Add multiple columns to a drop down.

 

[Matt C.]

This add-on completely breaks my forum when I enable the tiered navigation menu. For anyone else who has this, did you have to do anything to make it work?

Edit: even breaks my relatively clean localhost install.

 

[bzcomputers]

I have 3 suggestions:

If the function 'Tiered/nested menus' is turned on then this nicely reduces clutter in the desktop menu and expands when clicked or hovered.
However, it doesn't effect the mobile off-canvas menu,
I'd love to be able to add new links into the menu in the locations freed up by nested menus. But on mobile nothing is freed up or uncluttered. The xf menu clutter problem is worse on mobile.

1. Please add a setting / function to have tiered menu on mobile as well.
2. It would be very nice to have a horizontal separator line between menu options.
3. Add multiple columns to a drop down.

1. The plan was to leave the mobile menu as is. There isn't the same issue with limited space that the widescreen menu definitely has with numerous main menu and submenu options.

2. I currently only use horizontal separators for menu tiers that have to be collapsed into another tier because of screen width limitations. Using horizontal separators everywhere to me looks a little cluttered. I could probably add it as an option. Here is what I mean about a collapsed tier using horizontal separators to distinguish a tier change (collapsed tier)...



3. Multiple columns gets into the "MegaMenu" space and after days of trying to get that to work perfectly it is now on the backburner.

This add-on completely breaks my forum when I enable the tiered navigation menu. For anyone else who has this, did you have to do anything to make it work?

Edit: even breaks my relatively clean localhost install.

The first I've heard of any issue although from the numbers it hasn't been installed very much. If you could PM me a link I could take a look at it. Everything is done with CSS and JS so conflicts should be minimal. Do you have other add-ons or a theme manipulating the menu structure, if so try disabling them to see if the issue disappears. That can give us a better place to start troubleshooting from.

 

[Alpha1]

Its critical for SEO to have the websites most important pages in the main navigation. Its an important signal that Google takes into consideration. XenForo by default does not do this and already clutters the navigation menu, Your addon allows us to free up some space and to reduce clutter. This space can then be used to insert the links that Google requires us and that users actually find important.

1. The plan was to leave the mobile menu as is. There isn't the same issue with limited space that the widescreen menu definitely has with numerous main menu and submenu options.

The mobile menu has issues if all links are displayed in a long vertical list, without tiered display. For example: by using your addon I can reduce the number of links per dropdown on desktop. I can then use the freed up space to add a few links that actually links to content (topics) like forum sections. Using your tiered navigation option I can add some links under each of those. It will still look nicely.

But on mobile all links are just displayed as one long vertical list, while mobile devices have limited space. This completely defeats the purpose.

2. I currently only use horizontal separators for menu tiers that have to be collapsed into another tier because of screen width limitations. Using horizontal separators everywhere to me looks a little cluttered. I could probably add it as an option. Here is what I mean about a collapsed tier using horizontal separators to distinguish a tier change (collapsed tier)...

I would use horizontal separators to separate between Topical links (links to specific forums, categories, pages) and functional links (new content, find, watched, search, etc)