In #1137920-126: Fix toolbar on small screen sizes and redesign toolbar for desktop, I added a patch that allows configuring the toolbar to limit to a certain depth. D8's HEAD toolbar is just one deep. It's pretty obvious to me why allowing 2 deep on mobile is beneficial:
- I'm never interested in "Structure": I'm interested in Blocks, Content Types, Menus, or Taxonomy
- I'm never interested in "Reports": I'm interested in a particular report
- I certainly never want to the full "Configuration" wall of links on a phone; I'd rather pick a configuration group, and then see a manageable number of configuration links (with their descriptions)

But beyond a depth of 2, we get into some challenges:
- We have to deal with performance issues: probably requiring both client-side caching and server-side caching, both of which have their challenges, and/or implement some clever "just in time" asynchronous fetching of the 3rd/4th levels only after some initial 1st/2nd selection is made.
- We have to visually distinguish the 3rd+ levels from the 2nd sufficiently. The current approach of just a slightly darker grey is a bit subtle.
- Information architecture issues around when to add a "List" child or local tasks, depending on how #1807432: Collapsing menu items through > are not discoverable and #1811998: Decide which local tasks to add to the toolbar menu tray — mimick D7 admin_menu? progress.

These challenges are likely solvable, but is there sufficient benefit to trying to?

Comments

dcmistry’s picture

dcmistry CreditAttribution: dcmistry commented

My comments:

1. Mobile users want to access their Drupal site only for critical tasks and frequent tasks that can be done very quickly. E.g. IMO, it is unlikely to see content creators are going to write a content piece (of a reasonable size) on a mobile. They will look for a desktop. So, I completely agree with your very valid concern here. Same holds for the tasks, and things they would perform on a mobile device.
2. To your question about going more than 2 level deep: We can certainly gauge this information through UX research. There are two key pieces that should be separated:
a. Do users understand the interaction and see the value in having a closer click access to their frequent tasks on mobile?
b. What are the elements the users would want to have a closer click access to?
Usability testing coupled with contextual inquiry/ survey will provide insight to both of these metrics.

I would be happy to collect this information if the need be.

tkoleary’s picture

tkoleary CreditAttribution: tkoleary commented

@effulgentsia "- We have to visually distinguish the 3rd+ levels from the 2nd sufficiently. The current approach of just a slightly darker grey is a bit subtle."

Moved the container indentation and added text indentation in the most recent prototype (here: http://invis.io/MW7OS23K ) to deal with this. The combination of the three (color, box indent, text indent) should be enough affordance now.

Shyamala’s picture

Shyamala CreditAttribution: Shyamala commented
Issue tags: +#d8ux, +#d8mux, +toolbar-followup

adding tags

effulgentsia’s picture

effulgentsia CreditAttribution: effulgentsia commented
Status: Active » Closed (works as designed)

I'm satisfied with how the 8.x toolbar turned out, so since I opened the issue, I'm now closing it. If someone else wants this question answered though, feel free to reopen.