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🧠 Brainstorm ideas for further improvements of the navigation redesign

Ideas based on feedback

Bring back hovering (#415343 - closed) • Thomas Hutterer • 16.4

My biggest gripe with the new navigation is that accessing any page via the sidebar with my cursor now requires 2 clicks instead of The best functionality about the old sidebar was that it would, on hover, show you all the sub-items. Now, I have to click once to enable the sub-menu and then another time to go to the page I need. - #409005 (comment 1412420491)

New design should make people do less clicks to reach frequently used places, not more. - #409005 (comment 1420861858)

Before I could mouse-over and click to the submenu item I want to navigate to, now I have to click twice. One additional click -> bad user experience and effort to achieve my goal. - #409005 (comment 1417405852)

The main thing I keep doing is checking the commits graph, very nice feature. Now I seem to have to click 3 times instead of 2 to get there. - #409005 (comment 1417173627)

It was easier before when "Merge requests" and "Pipelines" was directly clickable. Now we are two clicks away from both of them. - #409005 (comment 1417120394)

This feedback appeared often. We could address this by changing the orientation of the chevrons and adding a menu that appears on :hover

Hover

Reduce the frequency unpinning (#416555 - closed) • Thomas Hutterer • 16.4

I found myself accidentally unpinning items more than once, because the unpin icon was only visible when my mouse was already over it. - #409005 (comment 1415663756)

constantly being in the edit mode feels odd. the accidental unpin bug mentioned before multiple times is only one thing but also the optics, having pins and drag widget all the time (or on mouse over) is not what i want in work mode. - #409005 (comment 1417366034)

  • Option A: Add a toast notifcation with an undo button
  • Option B: Delay the 📌 button on hover
  • Option C: Make it harder to unpin by making a specific edit mode for this section.
  • Option D: Add a modal before a user unpins.

Avoid jumping from a collection to pinned (#421011 - closed) • Thomas Hutterer • 16.9

If I pin an item, issues boards for example, and then later click on that item in the section in this example plan. I find it unnecessary to collapse the section (plan) when highlighting issue boards in the pinned section. I would prefer if the plan section stayed open since my intent was to work within that section. - #403059 (comment 1344289229)

Persist which collections are open across projects or on page reloading

doesnt seem to store the collapse state - can work around it by adding all to pins - #409005 (comment 1417346463)

Set delay on show tooltip for all navigation items

Can we add a delay on the tooltips (or remove them completely in favor of default browser tooltips 🙏)?

Using a mouse to navigate through the sidebar can lead to seeing lots of tooltips. Adding a delay could help prevent them from appearing unless it's absolutely necessary.

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/timing-exposing-content/

Make it quicker to find starred projects

But I have one question about "Starred" projects. Such feature sounds like something that should be fast-accessible. But the only way I found to open "Starred projects list" requires 3 clicks. - #409005 (comment 1420168218)

Idea: Add a shortcut list into global search modal

Add exception to collection naming with CI/CD

For me, Pipelines, Jobs, etc. under Build is confusing.

Pipelines are used for many things like Build, Test, Deploy, Checks, etc. So it is not really a good point to have them under Build. - #409005 (comment 1418010476)

Build did not resonate well. CI/CD has too much staying power, but it still can hold up in verb format if read as I want to continuously integrate/deploy.

Differentiate items in the pinned section

Pinned Items have no icons and there are duplicate headers in the menu, so now I have multiple pinned items with the same name and no means to differentiate them - #409005 (comment 1415663756)

Idea: MVC could just be better defining the text before considering an icon for every page

Replace avatar with hide sidebar button

The Hide Sidebar button in the middle of the Sidebar feels just wrong. IMHO it should be either on the top right (like a close Button) or in the same Spot as the Show Sidebar button, similar to the right sidebar. - #409005 (comment 1415663756)

The collapse drawer button wasn't really obvious to fought relearning this a few times especially on a vertical screen. - #409005 (comment 1410645767)

Move the avatar to the right side of the breadcrumb

to find my avatar pic was a challenge - #409005 (comment 1417088412)

I would keep the profile picture in the upper right, that's kind of standard to most websites and I keep clicking the wrong thing. - #409005 (comment 1416967790)

Make the search button more prominent

Was expecting a more visible search, then having to know that / triggers the search after hovering the icon felt more lazy to figure out and additional laziness to remember the /. - #409005 (comment 1418333210)

However, I agree that the [search] could be more visible. Having to hover over the icon to find out that/triggers the search can be a bit confusing and even discourage exploration. - #409005 (comment 1418904760)

Edited by Austin Regnery