By downtown70 on

I just upgraded to the 4.5.0RC and things are lovely, except the header links that i had set for custom pages have disappeared. The defaults are there, but not the ones I created for pages I added. Also, when creating a new page, there is no longer the option to create a headerlink with it. Anyone?

Comments

Dries’s picture

Dries commented

You'll have to re-add the missing links from the theme settings page(s). Because of the way the theme system works, the old method no longer works and is therefore no longer available. Sorry for this inconvenience.

downtown70’s picture

downtown70 commented

The theme system has made it impossible to offer key usability features. Hmmm, what's wrong with this picture?

So now, when one of my users wants to add a page, I will simply tell them: rather than just specify the link name as before, now please submit your link URL and title to me via e-mail so I can manually edit it in to the header link text. I think that rings a bell...

By the way, the new version (imho) is less intuitive. But, we'll roll with it and see what happens. At work, we are testing Drupal as a CMS for a large-scale community site and this does not bode well.

In any case - thanks for the clarification on where and how to make simple changes.

Steven’s picture

Steven commented

Most sites were not using that feature anyway, because xtemplate and chameleon did not respect it. We decided to go with the xtemplate approach because top links rarely need to be modified.

In 4.6 we hope to return this feature integrated with the menu system.

Dries’s picture

Dries commented

Stick with Drupal 4.4 until Drupal 4.6 is released?

cel4145’s picture

cel4145 commented

IMHO, while certainly it might be convenient to have users create their own navigational links in the header in the first half a dozen instances there is such a request, this feature would seem to have minor usefulness as there is also a usability limit to the number of links which can go in the header. After that point, it would seem that an administrator would have to jump in and make judgments on which links to replace before adding any more.

Thus, since allowing users to continue to create header links to new pages offers decreased usability for the site, it is likely you might have to eventually remove user access to this feature.

Boris Mann’s picture

Boris Mann commented

Yes, the usability is broken. A variety of modules in 4.4 tried to deal with this (like navigation). Some ideas on what needs to be fixed:

* One should be able to enable/disable links to the installed modules (and pages), plus edit the name of the link, plus order them
* Hooks to programmatically add to these links
* The links should include label, url, and an optional title field

Ideally these would be integrated into one of the theme engines.

adrian’s picture

adrian commented

If the primary navigation text box is empty, it should default back to the links generated from the _link hook.

What links specifically aren't showing up ?

--
The future is so Bryght, I have to wear shades.

Boris Mann’s picture

Boris Mann commented

Adrian -- he's talking about the page node type, where you could put a custom label on it and it would automatically be added to the header links. With 4.5, the only way to accomplish this is to manually enter the labels and links in the primary links field.