[dev] Redesigning the menu

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Gunnar Wrobel <wrobel at horde.org>:

> Assuming that people might be interested in going this route I would  
> like to suggest a first possible step: The redesign on the Horde  
> menu(s). While I wanted to have this suggestion a bit more fleshed  
> out before posting it to this list I currently lack the time to do  
> so and I don't want to keep the basic idea lingering around much  
> longer.

I think this makes sense, especially since consistency between the  
dynamic apps themselves, and between them and the more traditional  
apps, is one of the most confusing/poor aspects of Horde right now.

> The idea would be to copy from the current Google toolbar. Most  
> people using Google+ should know it. I believe the various Google  
> applications present a situation that matches out situation very  
> well. Especially the dynamic applications all start to evolve their  
> own specific user interface and don't rely that much on having a  
> unified sidebar anymore. So we would collapse the sidebar and the  
> top menu into one bar at the top of the screen. Depending on the  
> menu entry it would either be a simple link to the corresponding  
> application or a drop down menu containing quick links for the  
> applications. Google primarily uses links but offers a drop down for  
> the profile, share and preferences section. I guess we could do  
> something similar and maybe also do drop downs for the applications.  
> Those could take some of the elements we currently have in the side  
> bar if we feel that is necessary.

My opinion:

0. (assumed point of view) Instead of having both dynamic, static, and  
minimal views, we should just have html5 and minimal. Very few phones  
that we want to provide more than workable support for are not  
smartphones at this point, and a feature phone will be able to use a  
non-javascript bare-ish html interface about as well as anything else.  
That simplifies things somewhat because we are then really just  
designing for one frame: the html5 rich web app.

Given that, I think the Google toolbar is a good option, because it  
would let us tie together the frame whether the app below it was fully  
dynamic already or still relatively static.

I also really like toolbars/menus like this that include more than  
just list content in dropdowns. A good example is espn.com - hover  
over the black bar near the top of the screen with the sports and  
other sections, and you'll see lists, but also summary content,  
pictures, space for search boxes, etc. We could allow a lot of  
flexibility inside that kind of a model.

-chuck