Xtr3's Drupal feature requests

Created on 01/18/2005 at 1:30 AM EST

A forum thread dedicated to my Drupal feature requests. Posted in forum & not as issues to generate community feedback. If enough feedback is created for specific requests then issues will be submitted to get features implemented into Drupal.

Comments

afafdasfasfa32324’s picture

Modules listed here should be created & maintainted by the Drupal development team & included with future Drupal releases.
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New Modules

Breadcrumb module
Breadcrumb module will allow you to control breadcrumb navigation.

For example, you create a page titled about us. Normally all you would see in the breadcrumb navigation menu is Home.

Using the breadcrumb module, you can specify if content titles are displayed in the breadcrumb navigation menu globally or per-content item & for which content types (e.g. page, story).

After creating the page about us, you enable page content titles to be displayed in the breadcrumb navigation menu globally. Now you'll see the correct breadcrumb navigation hierarchy:

Home » about us

Notice how Home is hyperlinked, but the current page about us is not. This is how you would normally display the breadcrumb navigation hierarchy, but additional options will allow you to also hyperlink the current content title in the breadcrumb navigation menu.

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sub-node module
sub-node module allows you to take the breadcrumb module to the next level, but has additional non-related features.

For example you have a page titled about us. This page consist of general information about your company or community. Even with the breadcrumb module, your breadcrumb navigation hierarchy is limited to one level using page content:

Home » about us

But let's say you want to include specific information about your company or community, such as contact information.

sub-node module allows you to create additional levels in your breadcrumb navigation hierarchy:

Home » about us » contact

You can essentially create an unlimited number of levels using the sub-node module.

Your company or community may have several telephone, e-mail or mailing contacts so therefore you want to create a seperate page for each form of contact. Using contact as the parent content page for each form of contact, you can create three seperate pages as a sub-node of contact.

Home » about us » contact » telephone
Home » about us » contact » e-mail
Home » about us » contact » mailing

Creating links to all your sub-nodes can become time-consuming. That is why sub-node module allows you to simply insert {sub} into the body of your content at any given part. This generates a list of links to sub-nodes that are directly underneath the parent content page.

For example by inserting {sub} into the body of the contact page, it will display links to the various forms of contact:

telephone
e-mail
mailing

ixis.dylan’s picture

I prefer breadcrumb navigation that include the current page title at the end, so I'd vote for this feature/fix. The current method creates a lot of "broken" breadcrumbs on the site's I've created, where nothing but "home" is rendered.

afafdasfasfa32324’s picture

I'm done typing for now. Please post feedback regarding my suggestions, using this comment when you reply. Thanks!

Steven’s picture

You've just described book.module plus some options to control its output more.

Also, we don't display the current page in the breadcrumb, as the breadcrumbs are directly above the page's title. Having the title twice would look awkward.

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If you have a problem, please search before posting a question.

afafdasfasfa32324’s picture

Why are you required to use book module to accomplish this? I thought the purpose of page content was to create static pages. Not only that, but when using the book module it displays the word book in the breadcrumb navigation menu.

Even if Drupal provides an option so the word book is not visible in a future release, the correct & essential way would be to add the features described above. I'd prefer the option to display the current content title in the breadcrumb navigation menu, regardless if I enable it. The reason being is that I'm sure that a large percentage of other Drupal users would.

robertdouglass’s picture

You can accomplish the same with menus and pages. The book module was just a suggestion. The reason why it doesn't seem aptly named is that it has grown significantly since its inception and is now moving to be one of the premiere methods for organizing content. Perhaps we'll have to rename it at some point.

- Robert Douglass

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visit me at www.robshouse.net

afafdasfasfa32324’s picture

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chrisada’s picture

On my site, there are pages that are not related to others and pages that belong to some hierachy. For the first group I use page, the second group I use book.

In your proposal, all pages has to have a place on a site-wide hierachy.

But for displaying the current page in breadcrumb, I agree. It is less prominent there and shouldn't be confusing even if there already is page title nearby. As it is now, it's a bit confusing whetehr the current page is under or on the same level as the last item in breadcrumb. (I guess this is partly because a larger portion of sites out there do it differently, and my brain has been conditioned by that)

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Jaza’s picture

It is possible to achieve 'sub-nodes' to some extent, using the current features of Drupal. The method that I suggest is by no means perfect, but it's better than nothing. This is what I propose:

  1. Create a hierarchical vocabulary of terms (using taxonomy.module) - see step 4 before actually doing this, by the way.
  2. Make this particular vocabulary compulsory for all node types (you may want to exclude forum topics, book nodes, and some others, as they have their hierarchies managed by their individual module).
  3. Associate (almost) every node on your site with a term from this vocabulary.
  4. Use taxonomy_context.module to give every term in this vocabulary a description (can be as long as you like - long enough to virtually qualify that term as a 'node').

If you do this, then taxonomy_context will generate breadcrumbs that correspond to the hierarchy of your terms, and you will basically have a hierarchy of pages (except that only the pages at the bottom of the hierarchy will actually be nodes - the rest will be taxonomy terms). You can also classify your nodes under other vocabularies, but still maintain the breadcrumbing of the one 'master' vocabulary.

I have implemented this method on my site, and I am probably going to keep it for the long-term. However, I do consider this method to be 'making the most of what is available', rather than 'the best way to do things'. A proper sub-node module would be better.

Jeremy Epstein
GreenAsh Services

Jeremy Epstein - GreenAsh

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