nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Navigation (again)

System

What lightweight facilities have you implemented successfully to allow users to define/override default navigation? I know this has come up before but I think it deserves reconsideration.

We are thinking of implementing a navigation scheme based on the information architecture of the site - each content element has a metadata property that lets the user define it's nav title and whether or not the item should appears in navigation, and the navigation is automatically/dynamically created based on folder structure, file contents and metadata. I've done this in the past and it seemed to work pretty well when there was a close relationship between IA and UI.

There are some cases where the navigation shouldn't match the folder structure at all. This is more like the general case of "how do I let users declare navigation" when the navigation does not match the IA.

What are people using successfully to let non-technical users define navigation? or what existing URLs describe this subject?

TIA,

-John

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Comments

gzevin

did you allow metadata that will let you reuse the content in different conext?

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

Migrateduser

> did you allow metadata that will let you reuse the content in different conext?

I'm not sure what you mean, but it feels like this project may be missing something. These are largely shallow sites with just a few thousand URLs (3-4 levels of left-nav). Conent, information architecture and metadata will be stored as XML on the published site, which should therefore be infinitely repurposable. One of the marketing users has suggested guided navigation, but most people don't seem to think this is appropriate for our non-transactional content and would prefer completely predictable navigation. We're just using standard templating components to capture manually-entered metadata - we have no taxonomy, library sciences expert, budget, etc. We are planning to support Dublin Core plus whatever custom metadata is required to support the application. Hopefully the search engine (TBD) will be able to work with that. Right now we gather the Dublin Core fields as well as syndication, audience targeting, presentation and other options using templating. Navigation wll be based on a combination of metadata, content and content relation (for instance, title, link title and IA placement) , and permissions are used for security. The system can store any number of one-way or two-way typed references between content objects, but I am not sure how the user would create or what the system would do with them. This is really what I'm looking for - how to gather this navigation data and how to store it. We are not looking for something that will generate dynamic navigation based on metadata, but something that will dynamically generate navigation based on relatively static data (probably in XML).

Let me know what I'm missing.

Thanks,

-John

gzevin

John,

what I meant was that very oftne there is requirement to reuse the same piece of content in different parts of the web site, that is , in different placies in the IA.

I saw a number of techniques that would link the content with the IA and defined a few ways of doing it myself as well.

have you decided what technology will be used to generate menus?

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

Migrateduser

We have to use some news content/metadata on a number of pages. For instance the headline will appear on the home page, the archives page and the article itself. In fact the user should enter the article once and it may appear on multiple internet/intranet sites, in email newsletters, etc.

We are hoping to build the navigation with XSL but can use .NET if needed.

I would be interested to hear the teqhniques you have heard of and implemented, especially what you thought worked best.

gzevin

Well,' worked best' is an overstatment if we are alking about TeamSite, but there are a few ways:

1. simple but effective - menu is generated based on the path of the HTML file. (every directory has an appropriate mapping to a menu item name, i a sort of a config file).
So, in a content DCR you just add one or more path(s), that will contain that piece of content. Obviously, every file name, etc, have to be regenerated from the DCR - and the whole site is subject very frequent regeneration.
2. (My technique) - Create a content template, that is separate and the include that content in a 'page assembly' template. Menus are generated by a few superusers, sometimes in workflows, by request from a user that wants to link to a new page. The menus are generated as SSIs, so no regeneration of the site is required. Menus are designed in a template as well, 3 levels of hierachy are supported..
3. Another technique - I've just implemented a prototype. The menus are implemented as javascript code, and their structure is defined in a DCR as well. That particular site I am talking about is done in Cold Fusion, and the menu is included in the header .cfm file - so it's included dynamically, therefore no site regenration is required.

so, you could use either metadata or DCR element to define your menuing needs (in the end, both EAs and DCR fields and up as key-value pairs.

one thing I would definitely put as a number one requirement - to avoid unecessary regeneration of pages, based on the change in menus.

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU

Bowker

John,

Our site doesn't have a physical IA. The site's navigation is based upon an XML file the contains the page location with the site.

What we do with that XML file is a little more complicated than what I believe you need, but using templating you can open the XML navigation file and build the top/left nav based upon the location of the current page within the nav.xml file.

Takes a little work, but if you think a little out of the box, the possibilities . . .

Dan Bowker
Northern Trust
Web Publishing Technology