Nav Menu Improvements in the Customizer in 4.9

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In our usability tests with prior releases, we identified two common problems users encountered when trying to create a menu.

Clicking the Add a Menu button in an attempt to add a page to their new menu.
Forgetting to assign the menu to a location.

In WordPress 4.9, we’ve updated the CustomizerCustomizer Tool built into WordPress core that hooks into most modern themes. You can use it to preview and modify many of your site’s appearance settings.’s menu creation flow to address these issues.

An Updated Menus Panel

The Menus panel layout and copy have been updated for clarity. The panel now shows menus first and locations second. This puts menus front and center and allows the panel to adjust more easily to specific scenarios. For example, when there are no menus, the panel asks users to create a menu and explains the steps to be taken.

Before	After

Menu Creation

When the user clicks Create New Menu, the Customizer opens a dedicated menu creation section. Using a dedicated section allows us to guide the user through each step of menu creation. We start by inviting the user to provide a clear name for the menu and to select its new location. Once the menu is created, we guide them to add menu items and highlight the Add Items button if the user doesn’t find it after a short time.

Create a Menu for a Location

The locations section now allows the user to create a menu for a location that has not been assigned a menu. When the user clicks a location’s Create New Menu link, the Customizer opens the Menu Creation section with the location preselected.

Deprecated UIUI User interface Classes

With the addition of a dedicated menu creation section, a number of classes are no longer used and are being deprecated.

The following PHPPHP The web scripting language in which WordPress is primarily architected. WordPress requires PHP 7.4 or higher classes have been deprecated along with their files:

WP_Customize_New_Menu_Control in

wp-includes/customize/class-wp-customize-new-menu-control.php

WP_Customize_New_Menu_Section in

wp-includes/customize/class-wp-customize-new-menu-section.php

The following JSJS JavaScript, a web scripting language typically executed in the browser. Often used for advanced user interfaces and behaviors. class has been deprecated (but not its containing file):

api.Menus.NewMenuControl in
```
wp-admin/js/customize-nav-menus.js
```

Related Tickets

#40104 Customizer: Improve menu creation flow
#36279 Add an “add new menu” button to the menu locations section in the customizer
#42114 Customize Menus: UXUX User experience Improvements
#42116 Customize Menus: Add “It doesn’t look like your site has any menus yet” view
#42357 NewMenuControl class has been removed from trunktrunk A directory in Subversion containing the latest development code in preparation for the next major release cycle. If you are running "trunk", then you are on the latest revision.

#4-9, #customizer, #dev-notes