[wp-hackers] wp_nav_menu too simplistic?

[Otto]

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 3:42 PM, John Bloch <jbloch at olympianetworks.com> wrote:
> As the
> nav menus get built out more, the API will get tweaked to allow easier and
> more flexible programming (although, I have to say, it's pretty flexible
> right now).

I'd be forced to disagree with that assessment. Currently it's
extremely difficult to modify the menus in a non-trivial way (as
you've pointed out, you have to modify the walker to do that sort of
thing), and can't be done by more than one plugin at a time, making it
inflexible in that respect.

I'd be a lot happier if it had been designed with add-ons in mind,
instead of being forced into the mold that it's in. Frankly, I think
that this is mostly because it was adapted from the existing Woo code.
That probably should have been thrown out or redesigned before
implementing it, IMO. Then it might be a bit more adaptable.

As it stands, I will not certainly not be implementing menus in my
themes or for any clients. Too user unfriendly, to difficult to
customize. I'll wait for 3.1, when they fix all the problems, since
they'll probably have to break backward compatibility to do it...

On Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 3:42 PM, Andrew Nacin <wp at andrewnacin.com> wrote:
> 1. The ability to, in only a few clicks, add an entire page or category tree
> to your working menu. We can call this static child handling.

That's minor and probably easily implemented, I'd say. I'm not
interested in it, but Nathan Rice seemed big on the idea earlier. I'm
sure it would be handy, but I don't consider it a critical loss.

> 2. The ability to say "I want all children X levels deep included as menu
> item children of this page/category", i.e. dynamic child handling.

Yes, this is the only thing I'm interested in, and the lack of it
makes the new menu system basically useless to me. I'm stuck
hardcoding my menus instead. Very disappointing, as the feature does
have promise.

-Otto