New Navigation menu! (27 Jan 2021)

Hi all,
Yesterday we pushed out a new menu on developer.mongodb.com (including forums). Now you can easily get to lots of different developer-focused places just from the nav bar!

Let me know what you think…

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When I’m in a topic in the Community Forum ─ like where we are right now ─ I don’t really have an easy way to get back to the default landing page: MongoDB Developer Community Forums - A place to discover, learn, and grow with MongoDB technologies.

My workaround before this new update was to click directly on the “Community” link at the top - but know there is an extra step to get there. Not a big deal - but I think it should be a little easier to navigate in the Community Forum different places.

I miss having this at the top at all time for example.

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It is very helpful to have all the useful links at one place in a user-friendly way!

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This is a great point, there are breadcrumbs on other pages but not on specific topic pages (like this one)…cc @Jamie

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What I do to stay on Latest of the forum is to always open a thread in a new tab.

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By extra step, you mean hovering over the Community header, then clicking the Forums link?

Yeah, I think the breadcrumbs idea is a good solution here. @Stennie_X thoughts?

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Yup that’s it. It’s buried now a little :-). Just to be clear ─ it’s not a big issue at all humm :smiley: !

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Hi @Sheeri_Cabral,

Loving the embiggened menu, but I have a few suggestions for more consistent interaction:

  • The mouse cursor should be different for clickable versus non-clickable items. The non-clickable category headings (Learn, Community, …) currently use the same “hand pointer” cursor as the MongoDB logo and the dropdown menu items.

  • All of the category headings are non-clickable with a dropdown, except for Documentation which is currently clickable with no dropdown. I was “waiting for the drop” but it didn’t happen :wink: . I’d like to see a dropdown menu including Documentation Home and the high level Documentation groupings: MongoDB Server, MongoDB Drivers, MongoDB Cloud, and MongoDB Tools.

  • I think the menu headings (eg “Programs”) should remain highlighted when the associated dropdown menu is visible. This may be a bug in the styling for the forum menu, since DevHub works like I’d expect.

I agree that including the Discourse top nav or something like an “All Categories” link before the current category would be a helpful UX improvement.

We used to have a link via the MongoDB logo at the top left of the page, but that went away with the transition to a unified menu for Developer Hub & Community Forums last June (resulting in similar discussion about a quick way back to the forum front page). Our workaround at the time was to link “Community” in the header nav to the forums, but in this latest menu update we also wanted to highlight other community activities like events & conferences.

Unfortunately Discourse doesn’t include the top nav on some pages by default, but I will look into options for adding this into our theme.

I also prefer the Latest view, which is an expanded version of the content on the right side of the forum homepage. I find Discourse’s keyboard shortcuts super handy (but I appreciate that some will always prefer visual options).

For example, I rely on jump shortcuts:

discourse-jump-to

To see a full list, choose “Keyboard Shortcuts” from the ☰ menu near the top right of the page, or hit ? without a text input field selected.

Regards,
Stennie

2 Likes

Hi I assume that @steevej does it like I do too:
when ever I “branch” out to follow a post and potential sublinks I open a new tab and do everything in there.
Than I go back to the point from where I “branched” -> I go back to the initial tab.
So latest would be in this notion not equivalent to g,l it would be the point from where I “branched”
In almost all cases the shortcut “U” does not help since it not always brings you back over several steps. Neither “g, …” is fine since this will jump you kind of back but not to the exact point from where I “branched”
Regards,
Michael

2 Likes

Hi @michael_hoeller,

I don’t think there is an obvious Discourse shortcut for the multi-tab workflow you are describing. The history for going “back” (with u) is associated with a browser tab, and other navigation options like Latest are references to preset views.

I also open many many browser tabs (and windows with groups of tabs :grin:). Discourse saves some state in tabs that is eventually consistent across sessions (for example, if you open the same draft post in two windows they may have conflicting versions) but generally tolerates this workflow.

If I’m working my way through a starting page that has a lot of links, I usually move the starting page to a new browser window and then Cmd+Click links to open further links in new tabs. As I work through my tab reading list, I close each tab when done until the surviving tab is my starting page.

I often end up going back to the Latest view so I can see recent discussion activity. I also use the “Bookmarks” feature to keep track of topics of interest to visit later (with an optional reminder).

Hopefully we can work out how to make the top navbar appear consistently and add a Home link (or equivalent name) to return to the forum landing page. More advanced workflow might require some creative use of browser features.

Regards,
Stennie