By liquidcms on

I have always wondered why the admin->menu function is so functionaly limited. I think i sort of hoped it might be fixed in Drupal 5; but took a quick look and i dont see much of any change in Drupal 5 (for anything :().

So, is it perhaps just that i am the only one that would find this useful?

What i am refering to is when you EDIT a MENU in 4.7 and 5.0 i get the ability to change the name of the menu.. THAT'S IT!! wow, pretty darn useful.. ok.. little sarcasm there...

Would it not be nice if when i went to edit a menu i could get a list of menu items; and from that list i could modify titles, weights, delete, etc... to any of them at once?

So, how about it?.. does anyone else think this is not only useful; but pretty frickin obvious improvement?

OR... am i maybe just missing something.. is there a module already that lets me do this or some other place in the admin that it is hiding.

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x, Drupal 5.x

Comments

glendac’s picture

glendac commented

I would say that the administrative interface in Drupal 5.0 is a BIG improvement over that in 4.7. I like the way tasks are organized into five major functional areas (Content Management, User Management, Site Building, Site Configuration, and Logs). The organization and presentation of any of the items under each of these areas is a big improvement over 4.7. Clicking on Menu under Site Building in 5.0 takes you to a list of menu items organized around the major functional areas and each menu item has corresponding operations that you can do on them like edit and delete. Are you asking that all the properties of a menu item (title, weights, etc.) be presented to you at this level of the menu structure? How do you think that would look with about 50 menu items? Would you rather scroll or click a link to a page per menu item? I would find it a huge problem of design if I were going to create a page that would show all properties of all menu items on one page.

As to being able to do an operation on several menu items at once, I'm trying to think of situations where I might want to do that. One would be if I would like to delete a set of menu items because they were created willy-nilly. I can delete them all at once by deleting the parent item. But for all othe properties, uhm, I can't think of a situation where I would want a set of items all named Fred all set to a weight of 2, say, or all set to the same path. In many ways, menu items appear to be individual objects to me.

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

Yes, i do agree Drupal 5 has gone with civicspace's much more organized grouping of admin functions - but still.. pretty minor change overall (but still, much improved)

The organization and presentation of any of the items under each of these areas is a big improvement over 4.7. Clicking on Menu under Site Building in 5.0 takes you to a list of menu items organized around the major functional areas and each menu item has corresponding operations that you can do on them like edit and delete.

lol.. hmmm.. ok well i toook another look - so basically you mean it is exactly the same as 4.7??? I don't see any difference at all here - perhaps cvs version is drastically diffeent than the beta1 ver i am looking at??

Are you asking that all the properties of a menu item (title, weights, etc.) be presented to you at this level of the menu structure?

exactly. :)

as it is it is pretty near impossible to rearrange menu items - if you could see the weights of existing items you could adjust all weights (and titles if you wanted) at one time. withouth this you need to edit 1 item; check wieght, edit next item check weight, repeat until you get idea of surrounding weights, edit your item you want to move, then go back and possibly edit weights of all the items you just checked.. pretty painfull.

if you ever get a chance, check out the category_outline module - it does exactly what i am referring to for rearranging containers and categories. - i am using this code as basis for redoing the menu.module. Actually, better yet, an AJAX version of this that would allow you to move, promote, demote, etc menu items on the fly would be better .. but likely not until Drupal 8 i suspect.

also, you wouldnt be showing all menu items on a pge.. you would show paged view of menu items for single menu - just like cat_outline

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

heine’s picture

heine commented

kkaefer aka timcn worked on such features for SOC 2006. Most of the work can be found in his sandbox at http://cvs.drupal.org/viewcvs/drupal/contributions/sandbox/timcn/soc/
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liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

cool.. i didnt see it.. but maybe his tree.module??? I'll take a look...

thanks,

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

Well I guess whining is just whining.. unless you actually fix it…

here is what I think is a much better menu.module

[thought i could attach files here???? but dont seem to be able to]

module: www.liquidcms.ca/menu.zip
screenshot: www.liquidcms.ca/menu.jpg

there is 1 minor bug that I have found so far:

- if on the NEW “menu edit” page you do a menu item specific action like edit or delete – that takes you to the page for that specific item – once you have completed the task you are returned to the NEW menu edit page but the changes are not reflected (but they are done) – so if you go back to main menu page you will see changes and they will show if you go back to edit the menu

and a couple missing features:

- should likely have a bulk delete (i.e. a checkbox by each item with a “delete checked” submit
- could easily add the remaining menu item options to the table – expanded, path, etc

ALSO, should enable ability to (bulk) edit the Navigation menu – although I guess that has been disabled for some reason – but I know when I was working with category_menu.module and it was throwing in multiple copies of each menu item into Nav menu.. it sure would have been handy to be able to delete 20 items at once.

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

rearranging menu items is pretty painfull specially when configuring a site for the first times ("could you move -automotives- before -gadgets- ?.. oh, sorry, i think is better to sort them alphabetically..") or when you have to add a new item in between other two "4" weight items, and you have to rearrange all the others to make it fit in.

These are just couple of itchy bits, and bulk editing would be very handy!

Are you asking that all the properties of a menu item (title, weights, etc.) be presented to you at this level of the menu structure?

not all properties of course. Weight is the most relevant IMO, then comes title. Other options could stay in the advanced settings (edit page)

How do you think that would look with about 50 menu items?

i think with a good css stylesheet would be possible to minimize the overall encumbrance of the bulkediting widgets

@palindstrom: looking at your screenshot, where has the "disable" link gone? :o

ps: FYI the relative issue can be found at http://drupal.org/node/97717

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

certainly weighting was most important in my mind.. and the reason i modified the module to start with.

good idea to style it a bit.. once i get everything added to it - so that i can fit in things like path, expanded, a bulk checkbox (for delete/disable), etc - maybe need 2 rows per item ??? hmmm...

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

also, somewhat in regards to the concern of having many 50 menu items (which, honestly, if you did - it is time to seriously re-think you site structure!!!)

the menu form that ive added should support paging - since i shamelessly stole most of the code i used from the category_outline.module - and their's does paging

but i didnt have a menu big enough to test this - so cant say for sure...

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

For anyone who has been following this or using my new menu module; just a couple things:

- some of this banter on this can be read at: http://drupal.org/node/97717

but they got upset with me posting code their... so i have decided to move this thread back to forum.. lol.. but i can't attach code here.. hmmm.. sort of a catch 22 thing going on???

anyway.. my offsite project page for this can be found at: http://www.liquidcms.ca/menu

so for updates to code, screenshots, rev history, etc.. please check there

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

goosey’s picture

goosey commented

Just wanted to say i completely agree with you... arranging menus via individual weights all on different pages is soooo painful. So thanks for working on this, even if some of the guys over on the issues page seemed somewhat less than appreciative. When I first started using Drupal a couple of months ago I was surprised at how ugly the UI was changing menus. Great work on fixing it!!

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

I do sort of get that they are trying to maintain structure which is necessary in organizing a project the size of drupal...

i just think differently (at times).. my fix was easy, it works great, i've tested it... everyone that ever has to manage menus would want to use it - seems like a no brainer to me - so just trying to get the word out.

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

Ptalindstrom, the latest version of your menu module is just IMPRESSIVE and looks sssoo usefull, thank you for working on that!

Only problem :P i installed it replacing core menu.module, cleared caches, reloaded /admin/menu a dozen of times.....nothing. The menu page looks as it always did....how can that be? where am i wrong? :o

help apreciated! cheers

PS: about forum-issues queue ping pong: basically in Drupaland etiquette if you have code for new contributed modules you can post an announce on the forums and ask for a cvs account for it. If it is an improvement against a core module, you can then file it as a diff patch against it in the Drupal core issue queue. As a rule of thumb, full modules are not well accepted there. Best way to go is with smaller patches easy to be digested by core team ;)

goosey’s picture

goosey commented

i haven't installed it yet but I believe all the new functionality can be found by clicking on the "edit" link at the top of each menu. Using the core menu module the edit page only allows you to change the menu name; with the new version you get the bulk editing on this page too.

(might be wrong though, but check it out!)

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

why problems are so good at hiding behind the tabs and links you leave for last!? :)

thanks goosey, got to the right page now!

PS: tryed to make a patch for this beautyfull and usefull piece, but all i keep getting is just - the whole old menu.module and + the whole new one...anyone with 2 mins could give this a try? It would help getting this considered for in the issues queue

cheers!

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

Yes, a lot of people are telling me to just do a patch - although not sure that works too well here. I have migrated the menu.module single file to a menu module folder so that i could include CSS with it. Not sure that is very patch friendly.

Drupal 5 only has module folders though.. so maybe a patch for 5 would be useful.

Peter Lindstrom
www.LiquidCMS.ca

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

marcoBauli’s picture

marcoBauli commented

ptalindstrom: trying to change one of Navigation menu items name i get following error:

warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/kiteatla/public_html/drupal/modules/menu.module on line 452.

working great for the rest!

cheers

liquidcms’s picture

liquidcms commented

hey marco,

Do you know which version that was with? I think my latest (0.5) might have fixed that issue.

I have tried editting and saving several items in the Navigation menu and can't see the problem.

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Management Solution Experts

Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts

WeRockYourWeb.com’s picture

WeRockYourWeb.com commented

This sounds like a very useful module Peter. Only problem is it appears to replace the core menu module? That means whenever a Drupal update is installed your module will become outdated. At the same time any modifications to Drupal's core code (in this case the menu module) will interfere with Drupal's modularity. Is there a way for you to submit this as a contrib module (extension to Drupal) and post it as a Drupal project on this site? Then the module development can sync up with Drupal development and you can find development support as well.

Alex
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