A totaly new way of navigating through vB
 

Hi

In a thread on theadminzone.com there was a discussion about inovative new ways of forum layouts (here )

An inovative way would be an "explorer tree" like navigation of the forum like sitepoint does (example: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/index.php?)
They use it on there front page but unfortunatly don?t take it deeper which is bad.

It would need to be consistant throughout the forum (including threads) and it would need a switch button so that the left bar could be turned of and be replaced by a "forumjump" like menu (at the TOP!) instead for users with low resolutions.

It would be intuitive because all windows users would be used to the navigation from there explorer (either in tree view or with the drop down -> both ways of how the explorer can be used)

Also the back (one step up) and home button could be used to give it a real explorer feeling.

I think this would be a task for vb.org people

A style that introduces a totaly new way of a forum layout.

What do you think?

The idea is to have less mouse clicks and not more. An 'explorer tree' would become a big pain in the you-know-what as soon as the novelty wore off :ermm:

And why would that be?

After reading a thread you would not need to scroll up again or use the breadcroumb to get to the index and into the next forum.

Just one click on the tree and you would be there.

So why would the tree needs more clicks then the current layout?

You don't need to scroll up if you add navigation under the last post.

You're assuming that's where everyone wants to go...

Well yes and no :ermm: To open a tree you have to click on the "+" sign to open it up. That means that you'd have to click on EACH "+" sign until you found the one that you wanted. After a while this gets a bit boring and becomes a hassel for the user to do. We have developed and are trademarking a system that works with the users cursor and allows TRUE one mouse click from anyplace in the forum, to any other place in the forum (or the site for that matter). The goal is to make it easier to navigate, and not harder or forcing someone to click on a bunch of "+" signs all day just to find the right link :)

Did you spend a single second to look at the link example I provided?

Seems not because only for subforums there are + signs and not the whole forum.

The whole Idea of this thread is to start thinking of a totaly new way to navigate a forum.

Noone is forcing you to work on it nor use it but it is defenetly worth spending some thoughts about it.

The current forum navigation is custom for us forum users but for users which are new to forums it is not intuitive like using the breadcroumb or find the forum jump at the bottom right.

An explorer like concept is much more custome to 98% of all internet users because they now it from there windows

Yes.

Yeah... maybe Windows 3.2 :ermm: I don't know of that many people who use explorer these days, they are too busy clicking on all the pretty icons, which is basically how forums are set up now :nervous: We are developing another way to navigate forums which is much more human engineered and intuitive, but it's beyond the scope of this thread.

Any other thoughts on this idea?

How about Icons across the top for forum categories, I guess as long as it was as small forum it would be ok, each Icon you clicks get bigger so you know what forum your in?

BIG ICON -icon1--icon2--icon3--icon4--icon5--icon6--icon7--icon8-
1st post Teaser Description------User------last replier (views)(reply now)
2nd post Teaser Description------User------Post count (views)(reply now)
4th post Teaser Description------User------Post count (views)(reply now)
5th post Teaser Description------User------Post count (views)(reply now)

It would be easy to navigate. :)

I don't know if this helps but I made a customized navmenu on all my site pages.

www.limmac.org

i think it is a very clever layout. NICE!

I'm interested in a forum tree like sitepoint too

You still have the normal forum index

http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/forumindex.php?

Why would you dredge up a post almost a year old? I'm baffled.

... mainly because he is using the search engine properly... he found a topic related to what he was interested in... why do you bother complaining?