📣 GitLab New Navigation - Feedback issue

New navigation

During this stage, please see the epic and review what has changed.

Overview

The Navigation redesign is available to all GitLab users in 16.1. We defaulted the navigation to "on" for all users on 2023-06-02 - view rollout progress.

• This is GA should not break your core workflows (parity with old)
• Three major enhancements to Navigation should increase useability:
  1. Our reclassification into fewer top-level buckets
  2. the Your Work navigation
  3. Pinning (allows custom navigation pins on project and group level)

Feedback summary Oct 5, 2023

Thank you for all of the feedback on this issue! Your feedback is core to how we work at GitLab. We read them all and use the feedback to gauge our choices and prioritize.

We heard your feedback, and we've iterated over the past 4 months to make our new navigation better. Our data shows 60-95% of weekly sessions using the navigation, and 68% of unique monthly active users and we have goals to keep making this better for everyone!

Thank you all for highlighting your concerns. Some of the bigger features we addressed were a new context switcher (16.4), themes (16.3), and polishing our peek and pin behaviors over the summer. And keep an eye on some of the open concerns we’ll keep iterating on like admin button findability and more peek behavior polish.

This navigation is the first step one in our vision to make GitLab a better place. We’ve got plans to tackle the home page, better settings, and better search.

We'll be rolling out the new navigation to all users in the next few releases, and we’ll provide more opportunities for feedback then. Closing this issue until then and thanks again!

Instructions - please read before posting!

Thanks for using the navigation experience! Before leaving a comment, be sure to checkout our list of things we are already aware of and plan on addressing.

• This feedback issue is for changes to the left-hand sidebar only (see image above). Other changes to navigation items, e.g. on Issue and Merge Request pages are unrelated.
• We will read all of your feedback!
• We will not respond to all feedback
• All found issues will be logged in the action summary of this issue

Actions we are taking from the feedback

• Make searching and switching context easier to discover: #409522 (closed)
• Start brainstorming ideas based on feedback shared here: #406285 (closed)

Bugs

• Missing icons on oauth Icons missing in the supersidebar on oauth pages (#414418 - closed)
• Avatar causing overflow: Adds a max width to custom instance logos (!123402 - merged)
• Scroll to anchor bug: New navigation scroll to comment anchors are to... (#415491 - closed)
• Peek behavior bug Peek behaviour sometimes misbehaves (#412896 - closed)
• Keyboard interaction in search modal Fix keyboard interaction in search modal (#417476 - closed)

What we've started looking in to

• Accidental unpinning → #416555 (closed)
• "Your work" vs "My work" → #416559
• Shortcut wanted to toggle right sidebar in issues visibility
• A desire for the ability to pin other types of content like pages or views
• Reducing the number of click to get to sub items → #415343 (closed)
• Theming and contrast → #378549 (closed)
• Challenges with finding the Admin Area → #415854 (closed)
• Restructure breakpoints Adjust the logic to escape the navigation overl... (#415856 - closed)

This is known

• Hiding the sidebar will not show the minimized left sidebar rail with only icons #389958
• The items you pin while you're viewing a project are different than the items you pin while viewing a group. !124774 (merged)