Menu flexibility
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- Niels Binder
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 255
- Thanks: 5
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In geneneral the navigation menu with gantry is impertinent inflexible to place and design.
Gantry's great flexibility with everything except the menu creates a designers blockade.
My personal expectance on a premium template is a ready designed menu, ready to be placed whereever and however.
That means horizontal, vertical, on the right side, on the left side or even in the middle of a site.
Why this does not exist since years ? Please don't look at other template providers. Just imagine what sites could be created.
Maybe there is a serious coding or marketing issue which prevents this? I hope it does't tackle you, but i am going mad from this impertinent navigation staying menu and it seem you like to continue this behave with the mobile menu ... - Last Edit: 8 years 3 months ago by Niels Binder.
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- MrT
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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- Web Designer/Developer
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The Gantry 5 menu is just about the most complex code that we have in Gantry 5 already since it has to work across all three CMS platforms and provide a whole host of features. If you don't want to use the Gantry 5 menu system then there are alternatives (at least in WP and JOOMLA) that you can use.
The functionality provided by the Gantry 5 menu system meets the requirements of most members and we believe the functionality it provides is sufficient. If you looks at the various Gantry 5 templates there are a wide variety of different styling applied to the Gantry 5 menu which include dropdown menus, horizontal menus (left and right side), mobile menus (left and right side), and overlay menus, bottom menus. A few example templates I would site are, callisto, Kraken, Versla, and Isotope.
I am not sure why you think the Gantry 5 is "impertinent" since I think the Gantry 5 covers most of the items that you mentioned. Perhaps you could give a few example links to menus that you think can't (or are difficult to achieve) with the Gantry 5 menu particles.
Thank you for your feedback though, we are always keen to improve our products where we can.
Regards, Mark. - Please search forums before posting. Please make sure your post includes the version of the CMS you are using and a link to the problem. Annotations on screenshots can also be helpful to explain problems/goals. Please use the "secure" tab for confidential information.
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- Niels Binder
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 255
- Thanks: 5
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Hallo Mark.
Thanks for your responding.
First i need to state that "Impertinent" more clearly. NOT Gantry is impertinent .... I am very satisfied about the flexibility of Gantry. It seems to be made with love, a big Kiss from me for that.
What i meant is the menu particle which always show me that it is intended to be used in certain sections. "Menu particle is designed to be used in certain sections only and may need extra styling in order to look correct in another location." This gives me the inflexibility to place it where i want. Impertinent because it is there in every gantry template, and i always want to play around with different locations AND arts of menus to create a unique website.
I think i get your point. Maybe the code is getting unnecessary complex to make the navigation available in all sectors.
What i feel is that rockettheme tries to free the web designer from going to deep in which code ever and give flexibility. Regarding the menu flexibility, it is not yet a good solution in my mind.
Actually, i think it is two different inflexibilities with the menu:
1. The location.
2. The functional design
For the first i will stimulate you to find a code solution to make it available to all locations in all templates. I am not a expert for that, maybe it's a no-go. From designers point it would be a brain liberator.
For the second the actual variety of the functional design of navigation is very limited.
It is limited in that way that it is "baked" in the template design so its hard to find the right combination of a suitable navigation together with the good (rest) design of the template. The needed effort seems to be fair for the way to adopt some graphical design changes to an existing menu, but to adopt menu changes to a existing design is by far to much effort. This seems to lead to select a template focused on the navigation/menu.
What about other systems?
- Based on the change to small devices for example a tiles navigation is long overdue (Just my mind).
- Also, vertical side menus left or right or left and right! are preferred navigation systems for newer devices (actually not enough variety to choose in rocketthemes gantry 5 theme library)
- Viewport related switching in between different systems? It was a new browsing experience if you have sidemenus in large desktop view, horizontal menu in desktop view and tiles in mobile view (Just a example).
In my opinion its to worlds, the functional design and the graphical design which should be more separated for the "brain liberation"
Just a switch in Gantrys particle to change the menu system in between horizontal, vertical, tiled, overlay etc, OR different particles for each system available for all templates is what I am dreaming of … - Last Edit: 8 years 3 months ago by Niels Binder.
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- MrT
- Preeminent Rocketeer
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- Web Designer/Developer
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Personally I think the Gantry 5 menu is flexible enough. But you're correct too that we style that menu in different way in different templates. I think to put all these possible combinations and styling into the core product is the wrong thing to do since it will just add bloat and slow everything down. Most members will use the styling we suggest/include in the template so it would be overkill to include every other permutation of styling possible.
For a "tiled" menu example have a look at the "overlay menu" in Isotope (which is still using the Gantry 5 menu particle just with template specific styling).
You can choose to have the menu on left or right. You can choose to have dropdown open left or right too. You can have a horizontal menu or vertical menu, and you can change the section is which the menu is published too. So, I would still like to see examples of the menus that you can't achieve with Gantry 5 as this would be useful to show our developers.
As I also said there are alternate menu systems available too as plugins. Gantry 5 also includes other complimentary menu particles such as "simple menu" too.
I just don't think it's possible/desireable to create one all encompassing particle that provides every conceivable combination of menu and styling.
Thank you again for your thoughts...
Regards, Mark. - Please search forums before posting. Please make sure your post includes the version of the CMS you are using and a link to the problem. Annotations on screenshots can also be helpful to explain problems/goals. Please use the "secure" tab for confidential information.
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- Niels Binder
- Hero Rocketeer
- Posts: 255
- Thanks: 5
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Thanks for your tips Mark.
I have another notion to this topic. I think if everybody press you to get it in cause they need it, you will find a nice way to swap only the needed code in.
To be honest i am not jet cooled down. Would you please leave the topic in the water cooler. It was intentionally placed there to get attention from the unsatisfied and to find out if there is more customers who need more flexibility in the menu.
Regards, Niels
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- MrT
- Preeminent Rocketeer
- Posts: 101084
- Thanks: 13484
- Web Designer/Developer
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The best RT forum for this type of discussion is the "Gantry 5" forum. That is what your topic is about... the "watercooler" forum is for "General chit-chat and non-RocketTheme related discussions" so it is an inapproriate place for this topic.
The Gantry 5 forum is an open forum which any member can access (even if their subscription has expired) so anyone can chip in to this topic.
If you want to press the Gantry 5 developers to change Gantry 5 then the place to do that is in the Gantry 5 project by raised a ticket in github here https://github.com/gantry/gantry5/issues . You can also view all previous tickets there regarding the menu and the answers the developers provided. If you want to debate the merits of the Gantry 5 menu system with other developers then you can do that in the Gantry 5 gitter chat room too which can be found here https://gitter.im/gantry/gantry5 .
Regards, Mark. - Please search forums before posting. Please make sure your post includes the version of the CMS you are using and a link to the problem. Annotations on screenshots can also be helpful to explain problems/goals. Please use the "secure" tab for confidential information.
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