Adding Customizable Menu to non-journal "frontpage" pages

[archangelbeth]

Title:
Adding Customizable Menu to non-journal "frontpage" pages

Area:
Links: Celerity sidebar, Troposphere... dropdown?

Summary:
Add a section of the menus in the secondary pages (comment pages, the suggest.bml page, etc.) that is customizable by the user the way that their journal appearance is.

Description:
I was egged on by Cesy. O:> We'd love to have a section of the menus (Celerity for me, presumably Troposphere for Cesy) that we could put various links on. E.g., Memories, this Suggest An Improvement page, a LJ page, our favorite webcomics... whatever we might want to refer to while writing a response to someone's post or comment, basically, and don't want to have to go navigate back to the front page of our journals to find. A half-dozen links would probably make me pretty happy.

Downside: requires adding a customizable menu (module?) to however many schemes/styles/whatever these are -- or at least a few of them.

Upside: no one bugs you about putting *their* favorite DW-related link into the default menu, for a good long time! O:>

Possible Upside: if you find a way to track what people put in their customizable menu, and find that a substantial number of them use X link, you can consider putting X link into the default ones, too.

Thanks!

Poll #1053 Adding Customizable Menu to non-journal "frontpage" pages

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 38

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
24 (63.2%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (7.9%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
1 (2.6%)

(I have no opinion)
10 (26.3%)

(Other: please comment)
0 (0.0%)

Comments

[denise]

I've been considering doing this for a while; it would let me add a link to the admin console, for instance, which is something I use all the time but not many others do, etc.

[archangelbeth]

<3

Yeah, it would probably be really useful for mods, come to think -- you've got all kinds of stuff that you do on the site, that regular users don't.

Bookmarks?

[adalger]

I ask with an open mind: is there any particular reason your favorite browser's bookmark / favorites / whatever facility is inadequate for this functionality?

Re: Bookmarks?

[zvi]

A lot of people don't use a single browser. Heck, firefox lets you use profiles so you can set up multiple firefox instances on one machine.

Re: Bookmarks?

[archangelbeth]

1) two computers I use most often. 2) their bookmarks are already really full of stuff. 3) if I lose my bookmarks (new computer, someone else's computer, different browser setup, using my iPhone...), the menu remains.

Re: Bookmarks?

[kyrielle]

I access Dreamwidth from three computers and an iPhone. Keeping all of those in sync would be a pain - and internet-based links-lists wouldn't be easy to add to from the iPhone.

Plus some people use public computers.

[triadruid]

Ergh. I really don't like messing with the menus, but this might be a good module to include in the logged-in homepage. Sort of the private equivalent of Links.

[archangelbeth]

I never touch the logged-in homepage. And it's got the same issue as putting all the links in my journal frontpage thingy. It's not where I most-often need it.

Besides, customizable menu can also be left blank for those who don't need it, yes? O:>

[triadruid]

It's pretty easy if you're using customizable menus to forget that you customized that, and direct somebody at an option/location that doesn't exist in their screen (we already get this with the different site schemes).

Also, logged-in homepage has the advantage over Links in that nobody else is 'bothered' by seeing it. On the Gripping Hand, I don't know how expensive it would be for the server to track that certain of your sidebar links were 'Private' and only load them for you. Then you'd see it whenever you were in your journal...

[archangelbeth]

If the customizable menu said: "Custom Links"... I think it wouldn't be as much a problem? "Oh, add this URL to your custom links options..."

[kyrielle]

That would be good to avoid confusion, yes.

The intranet tool we use at work has a custom links menu, and it has an item on its drop-down to add the current page to custom links, which makes it REALLY easy and is very handy.

[triadruid]

No, if it was its own separate dropdown in the menubar, it wouldn't be very confusing I wouldn't think.

[hammond]

If it's LiveJournal pages only, I'm all for this. I don't think it's the place to be linking external pages from; if you want to do that you should just use your journal's sidebar.

[archangelbeth]

Livejournal? Not DW?

[hammond]

Haha yes, DW >.< Sorry was on automatic comment mode and forgot where I was!

[azurelunatic]

*snrk*

[azurelunatic]

Ideally tied into the New Memories Facility, like so: you add things to your memories and have a list of X slots to fill with your crucial memories. Something tracks the number of times you have visited specific memoried pages, and suggests that perhaps you put X or Y into your memory menu.