WordPress 3.6: Menus
For menus we’re going to try to focus on some UI improvements. Menus work pretty well but users, especially the less-technical ones, are easily confused. We’ve seen them try to add menus without names because they see the “Create Menu” button before they see the menu name field, we’ve seen them add a bunch of menus instead of menu items because they’re unclear on the difference, etc, etc. The goal for the 3.6 cycle is to make menus a little more intuitive and user friendly.
@markjaquith and I are excited to have @lessbloat leading this. Take a look at all the user testing that has already been happening over at #23119 and make sure you comment here if you’re interested in helping out!
magol, 
lOOis, 
lessbloat, and 18 others are discussing. 
Aaron D. Campbell 1:08 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
On a personal note, I’d love to see #16075 addressed if there’s time.
Travis Northcutt 2:58 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I fully support this.
Drew Jaynes (DrewAPicture) 3:45 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
That would be a nice bonus..
timocouckuyt 8:02 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
+1 to this.
Gustavo Bordoni 5:23 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
This would be awsome.
wedi 6:59 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink
+100 oh yes please! It’s time to get rid of all these ugly workarounds!
Joey Kudish 1:10 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
In last week’s meeting, we discussed some improvement to the nav menu saving code as well. If that’s still on the roadmap, I’d like to help there.
Aaron D. Campbell 1:13 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I don’t specifically remember talking about saving. I know we discussed sluggishness with lots of items, and I know we discussed needing a complete back-end rewrite, but I think we decided both of those were outside the scope for 3.6.
Joey Kudish 1:13 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Gotcha, thanks for clarifying
F J Kaiser 1:45 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
For those who’re writing the patches and participating on the ticket, the [wp-nav-menu] tag archive over at WordPressStackExchange might be of interest. The views & votes are a good indicator for what devs & users are interested in and what they might need/how they see those tings.
http://wordpress.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/menus?sort=votes&pagesize=50
Gustavo Bordoni 1:55 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Hey Aaron, I was thinking these days, developers should have I way to put fields, or even HTML on the Menu Configuration panel. I could not find a filter or a action to to it.
If menus, is on the aim for 3.6, I would like to try to implement an API to do it, just like the Widgets one.
Matthew 3:05 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
This sounds like a fabulous idea.
Travis Northcutt 3:11 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
What exactly do you mean when you say fields or even HTML? Do you mean adding post meta support for menus?
Gustavo Bordoni 7:07 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Yes, just missed the word at the time. I feel like this would be useful for more complex menus.
wedi 7:02 pm on January 9, 2013 Permalink
Yeah!. You could add a search or login form for example.
Drew Jaynes (DrewAPicture) 2:49 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I’m very interested in contributing to this nav-menus refresh. We had great results user-testing the new color picker in 3.5 and I have high hopes for what we can come up with for nav-menus in 3.6.
MB Creation 8:24 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Hi. I’m sorry if this is not relevant but recently an offline page was still available in a menu. Don’t you think it should disappear from it ? (at least in the front-end ?). I Agree with gustavo about the idea of an API !
keoshi 11:53 am on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Would love to help with this, I think it’s one area where we could use major UX improvements.
GrahamArmfield 12:37 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I’m pleased to hear that the menu builder is likely to get a refresh. When that is being done, please can we make a menu builder that is keyboard accessible too – the current one is impossible or very difficult for anyone with disabilities/impairments to use. See http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21289
rachel_mccollin 11:56 am on January 9, 2013 Permalink
+1 to that.
lessbloat 5:32 pm on January 15, 2013 Permalink
Added this morning: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23119#comment:95
rfair404 1:15 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
Aaron, this is good news. I’ll help out on #16075
hereswhatidid 3:03 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I’d love to see it move away from the tabbed-style navigation and just use the underlying drop down menu for choosing which menu to edit. I’ve had far too many clients name a menu something like “Drop Down Menu for Home Page” which then pushes every other tab off the visible area. Also, managing any more than 4-5 menus is very painful as you constantly have to click the right and left arrows just to be able to select which menu to edit. I would love to help out if needed as I’ve already modified it to use the existing drop down menu on several sites.
mzak 10:09 pm on January 8, 2013 Permalink
I second this suggestion.
Rian Rietveld 8:15 am on January 9, 2013 Permalink
+1 for GrahamArmfield :”please can we make a menu builder that is keyboard accessible too” and hereswhatidid “just use the underlying drop down menu for choosing which menu to edit”.
adamsilverstein 3:40 pm on January 10, 2013 Permalink
i’d love to help out with testing/bug fixing. i have several clients managing huge & multiple menus, interested in improving reliability of interface and usability over slower connections; finally accessibility is an issue i’d love to see improved.
lessbloat 5:34 pm on January 15, 2013 Permalink
Hey Adam,
There are a bunch of changes in the latest patch: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/23119. I’d love your help in testing them.
lOOis 9:55 am on January 16, 2013 Permalink
When managing menus with lots of items and levels it would be great to be able to add new items directly to the right place, by drag&drop from the pages widgets to the menu (and not at the end of the list and then having to drag it one by one to the right place)
magol 9:35 pm on January 21, 2013 Permalink
If I understood everything right, I have to choose if I want the main menu to show the structure of my pages, or if I want to completely free create my own menu. I want to be able to reflect the structure of my pages, and stil be able to making adjustments.
Eg. like a .path file. I have the structure on the pages to start from, and do adds, modifications, and deletions in the custom menu.