[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #23450: Refactor menu item meta boxes as accordion

[WordPress Trac]

#23450: Refactor menu item meta boxes as accordion
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 Reporter:  lessbloat                          |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement                        |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                             |   Milestone:  3.6
Component:  Menus                              |     Version:  trunk
 Severity:  normal                             |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  3.6-menus needs-testing has-patch  |
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Comment (by chipbennett):

 Can I throw in a vote for returning the “Theme Locations” meta box? IMHO
 it is far more intuitive to associate Theme Locations with menus, than to
 associate menus with Theme Locations. It is also far more useful to see,
 at a glance, what Theme Locations have assigned menus, than to see what
 Theme Locations a given menu is assigned to.

 To test:

 Step X: Assign a custom menu to every Theme Location provided by the
 current Theme

 I think this step – critical to the setup of any given Theme – has been
 made more difficult with the current UI changes.

 Moving over some of the discussion from Make/UI:

 > The positioning of the theme locations meta box was confusing. It was
 aligned in the left column at the top…

 Agreed. But why not put the Theme Locations metabox in the main column,
 right above the Menu-Edit metabox?

 > The new approach reduces this to two steps.

 But the reduction-in-steps isn’t associated directly with the change.
 After creating a new menu, the user must still assign the menu to a
 metabox – only using checkboxes now instead of the dropdown.

 Also, this workflow appears to assume: a) a New Theme, with b) no
 previously created custom nav menus. Have you done UI testing for a user
 who already has created custom nav menus, then switches Themes?

 > Also, you can see at a glance which theme locations are assigned to
 which menus in the menu select drop down

 “At a glance” requires clicking the select, in order to see all
 menus/Theme locations. That’s an extra step from the old UI, when all
 Theme Locations were visible without user interaction. Also, I’ve not
 tested: how does the current UI scale when the same menu is applied to
 multiple Theme Locations?

 You also cannot tell from that select whether all Theme Locations have
 menus assigned.

 The only way to know if there are any Theme Locations without menus
 assigned is to make a mental note of the assigned locations in the
 dropdown at the top of the page, then compare that mental list with the
 list of checkboxes at the bottom of the Edit-Menu metabox.

 IMHO, that is a pretty significant UI loss inherent in this change.

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23450#comment:16>
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