So, I was requesting the other day, whether I could do some tests in here... I'm afraid it's not ready for testing yet, though.
Here's what I'm, hmm, trying to do...
See the Google+ or Facebook apps on mobile? They both have (and aren't the only ones) the 'navigation drawer' feature, which is something Google standardized for Android apps, where you swipe the screen to show a sidebar, and swipe it again to hide it.
Thing is, this is something that makes sense on mobile, and it reminded me that the original sidebar for Wedge was very similar to that... If you'll remember, if you didn't have enough room on the screen, it moved your sidebar to the extreme left, only showing a small portion of it, and when hovering that portion, it would bring it into view (position: absolute), with a nice animation and all.
Honestly, I can't for the life of me remember why I gave up on it, but here we are.
The main advantage of the current responsive sidebar, is that you can easily see its contents by just scrolling your mouse wheel, so it doesn't require much action on your part; that is its advantage, and really, its only one...
I've been doing LOTS of tests trying to get it right, started with a few lines of CSS, then added a few lines of JS, then expanded it even more, added more goodies, etc, the usual stuff, and now my current code is, like, 200 gzipped bytes added to the script file... Hmm. It's a lot to me, but I know I shouldn't be too worried about this kind of increase, especially since we still have 7.5KB for the entire script file, and it can easily go up to 10KB without me getting too worried, so... Whatever.
Here's what it's been doing until today... Hovering the left portion of the screen (about 30px wide) would bring the sidebar into view, position: fixed, with a scrollbar if too long, and a subtle but nice animation effect (basically, on mobile you get the bare animation, but on desktop you also get a parallax scroll effect on the whole page, which is nice really.)
There are two points where I'm currently stuck.
1/ The convenience. Of course, none of the sidebar information is vital, but still... it's a bit annoying, having to hover something so far on the left... Would like opinions on whether this is important, or not...
2/ The main menu. Up until today, I didn't touch it, but then I suddenly decided that it would be nice, at least on mobile, to automatically move the main menu to the sidebar. I got it working, but it's really hard.
(a) All items are developed, as intended, but I realized that as an admin, I have way too many entries, and it forces me to scroll wayyyy down just to be able to view the actual sidebar content...
(b) It's probably best to collapse them, then, but it suddenly implies an extra tap for mobile users. Swipe left to open sidebar, tap the menu item you want, then tap the option you want. The only advantage, I guess, is that since we're in the sidebar, I can easily control the menu item sizes, and thus you'll never have to zoom in to ensure you're tapping the right item, I guess... Opinions..?
(c) It also occurred to me that I could open *two* sidebars, eh... For instance, have the sidebar show up on the left, but at the same time, have the main menu unfold in a new sidebar on the right. This implies, however, that the sidebar can never fill more than half (or 60%) of the screen, otherwise you can only have one, or the other. I like the idea, though...
(d) Any .note classes will be hidden from view, obviously, if the menu is hidden by default... I mean, you won't get to see the number of admin errors, or PM number, or unseen media number. I could shove these up somewhere in the visible UI, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, or it might be more work than deserved, I don't know...
Okay, I'll end this long post here, given how my previous long post asking for feedback scared the hell out of everyone, I suppose it's for the best, eheh... :P
I'll post screenshots once I'm satisfied with the layout, but it certainly won't be today, and perhaps not tomorrow either, that's how much I'm NOT happy with it, but you know how much of a perfectionist I can be, so...
PS: in case you missed these, there are two uncommitted features that made their way into wedge.org last week: (1) infinite scroll now works on mobile, (2) previewing a notification will now mark it as read automatically, yay.
Here's what I'm, hmm, trying to do...
See the Google+ or Facebook apps on mobile? They both have (and aren't the only ones) the 'navigation drawer' feature, which is something Google standardized for Android apps, where you swipe the screen to show a sidebar, and swipe it again to hide it.
Thing is, this is something that makes sense on mobile, and it reminded me that the original sidebar for Wedge was very similar to that... If you'll remember, if you didn't have enough room on the screen, it moved your sidebar to the extreme left, only showing a small portion of it, and when hovering that portion, it would bring it into view (position: absolute), with a nice animation and all.
Honestly, I can't for the life of me remember why I gave up on it, but here we are.
The main advantage of the current responsive sidebar, is that you can easily see its contents by just scrolling your mouse wheel, so it doesn't require much action on your part; that is its advantage, and really, its only one...
I've been doing LOTS of tests trying to get it right, started with a few lines of CSS, then added a few lines of JS, then expanded it even more, added more goodies, etc, the usual stuff, and now my current code is, like, 200 gzipped bytes added to the script file... Hmm. It's a lot to me, but I know I shouldn't be too worried about this kind of increase, especially since we still have 7.5KB for the entire script file, and it can easily go up to 10KB without me getting too worried, so... Whatever.
Here's what it's been doing until today... Hovering the left portion of the screen (about 30px wide) would bring the sidebar into view, position: fixed, with a scrollbar if too long, and a subtle but nice animation effect (basically, on mobile you get the bare animation, but on desktop you also get a parallax scroll effect on the whole page, which is nice really.)
There are two points where I'm currently stuck.
1/ The convenience. Of course, none of the sidebar information is vital, but still... it's a bit annoying, having to hover something so far on the left... Would like opinions on whether this is important, or not...
2/ The main menu. Up until today, I didn't touch it, but then I suddenly decided that it would be nice, at least on mobile, to automatically move the main menu to the sidebar. I got it working, but it's really hard.
(a) All items are developed, as intended, but I realized that as an admin, I have way too many entries, and it forces me to scroll wayyyy down just to be able to view the actual sidebar content...
(b) It's probably best to collapse them, then, but it suddenly implies an extra tap for mobile users. Swipe left to open sidebar, tap the menu item you want, then tap the option you want. The only advantage, I guess, is that since we're in the sidebar, I can easily control the menu item sizes, and thus you'll never have to zoom in to ensure you're tapping the right item, I guess... Opinions..?
(c) It also occurred to me that I could open *two* sidebars, eh... For instance, have the sidebar show up on the left, but at the same time, have the main menu unfold in a new sidebar on the right. This implies, however, that the sidebar can never fill more than half (or 60%) of the screen, otherwise you can only have one, or the other. I like the idea, though...
(d) Any .note classes will be hidden from view, obviously, if the menu is hidden by default... I mean, you won't get to see the number of admin errors, or PM number, or unseen media number. I could shove these up somewhere in the visible UI, but it doesn't make a lot of sense, or it might be more work than deserved, I don't know...
Okay, I'll end this long post here, given how my previous long post asking for feedback scared the hell out of everyone, I suppose it's for the best, eheh... :P
I'll post screenshots once I'm satisfied with the layout, but it certainly won't be today, and perhaps not tomorrow either, that's how much I'm NOT happy with it, but you know how much of a perfectionist I can be, so...
PS: in case you missed these, there are two uncommitted features that made their way into wedge.org last week: (1) infinite scroll now works on mobile, (2) previewing a notification will now mark it as read automatically, yay.