Triangle indicating a collapsed menu should be a link

these menus are made by nesting <ul> lists...

your request would not be possible, as this is not a feature of that HTML tag.

a work-around might be to change the 'look' of the triangles so they do not appear to be clickable, or to make them look less functional. for example, they could be greyed out a bit- or made the same colour as the link. or they could be turned into standard dots. or these indicators could be removed completely for those top-level items...

but i think the triangle is trying to indicate 'more' content.

another convention is the plus-sign. it might be possible to replace with that.
(ie, + means collapsed, click for more content and the minus sign - means fully expanded)

i'll have a think about it, maybe someone else has suggestions too.

I think if you use padding-left and background-image with display: block, the image becomes clickable.

This is actually pretty easy using CSS. Check out the following proof of concept. It works in IE 6 and Firefox 0.8. I'll file a bug report for Opera.

CSS:
li {
display: block;
}
li a {
display: list-item;
}
li a:hover {
color: red;
font-weight: bold;
}

HTML:

• link
• link
• link

Junyor: I tried this method out, and it gets the desired results for me by just adding the display: list-item; to .menu li a in drupal.css. That is, it gets the desired results in Mozilla.

In Internet Explorer, however, there is no effect that I can observe whatsoever. As you already noticed, nothing happens in Opera. My iBook is non-functional at the moment, so I can't test with Safari or Mac IE. Anyway, I'd prefer to see a solution that works for all common browsers.

Also: -1 on changing the appearance of the triangles. I'd really like to see this work such that you could click them. It would satisfy my memories of a nearly identical interface on older Macs.

Since that proof of concept failed horribly, please take a look at http://timaltman.com/temp/lists.html (temporary link).

Using the test case I just posted on my site, IE 6 and Firefox 0.8 get similar results. I can check Safari 1.2, IE 5.2.3, Firefox 0.8, and Opera for Mac when I'm in the office tomorrow.

Junyor: Yes, you were right... it does indeed work in IE. However, drupal.css was specifying a width parameter, which apparently caused a conflict. I've attached a patch for drupal.css which appears to accomplish the task in IE6 and Mozilla. Feedback as to its performance in IE5 and Safari would be appreciated.

I tried TDobe's path in Konqueror 3.2 on two computers. The triangle icons doubled themselves and when I hovered over the link, the text shifted accross the screen. Screenshot attached.

Wow, just wow. A 3 year old issue. Collapsing menues through the javascript tools module has been thoroughly addressed. This is no longer a drupal issue, but delegated to that module. I'm marking this as fixed and triaging this issue to them.

In Drupal 6.x, this still fails to work either in Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer.

@cosmicdreams - collapsed menus are in Drupal core, and usability issues with them should be addressed there. This is the kind of thing that in a very small way could help prevent errors.

There's another usability problem though-- making the 'collapsed' triangle clickable would more strongly imply that it is a dynamic menu - that it expands without leaving the page -- when in fact it takes you to a new page...

Is there a javascript tool that seemlessly makes this truly dynamic and solves both? I can't find it in jstools where cosmicdreams sent this issue to rest.

Having menus expanded in HTML but collapsed with CSS/JavaScript the way form fieldgroups can be – in Drupal core – would seem the most natural and easy to implement.

^{benjamin, Agaric Design Collective}

Thank you Benjamin: I was commenting on antiquated methods of solving the problem listed in the OP in post 2 years ago. A lot has changed since then. But I have to agree with the OP, it still is the case that (at least) Firefox 3.5 you can't click on the arrow next to a menu item in the sidebar to "expand" the list of menu items. And by "expand" here I mean you can't click on the arrow and go to a page that shows the children listed below the menu parent.

So yes, this still is an issue. I am hesitant to excallate the Priority of this issue since to me it fits the definition of minor : This is most often used for cosmetic issues that don't inhibit the functionality or main purpose of the project. Or rather it doesn't match the Priority of given in the description of normal.

I think they are unnecessary. What good is it to 'communicate' (does it really?) that there's other items below the given item without any additional, concrete info about those items? In both cases (with or without the triangle) the only 'scent' to follow is in the labelling of the menu item.

I propose to remove them.

No idea if this is still an issue, but since it hasn't had any real discussion in over 7 years it is going bye-bye.