[Now Live] Dashboard shortcuts!

[Nick Barr]

A few weeks ago, Brian Floe had a great feature request —  to add a drop-down menu to the network bar, giving NCs direct access to all their manage pages.

It's simple, easy to do, and makes site management easier — we love it, and we're going to roll it out soon. In the meantime, we had one product question we wanted to ask. Would you rather see all Dashboard items in one list, or have a sub-nav? See the mockups for what I mean.

My vote is for Option A, because it's probably worth seeing everything at once, even if it does make the list pretty long. Also, we think there are ways we can optimize this organization going forward, so we're not super-committed to keeping the current structure. Might not make sense to set up a sub-nav if we're going to change it later.

With that in mind let us know what you feel — this is a feature for NCs by NCs :)

 

Option A:

 

Option B:

[Brian Floe]

Looking good folks!!! Live on one of my 3 networks and I love it! Thanks for adopting my idea :)

[solo]

hey first windows 7 and now you,it was my idea i was in the shower and i said hmm wonder if ning could......just joking ,thanks for for brining this up,lol

[Brian Floe]

Yeah, Bill is the guy to call if you need a good idea lol :)

 

I do think the text is a little small. Should have gone with bigger text size and 2 column drop down menu.

[Donna Mac]

STILL NOT FIXED!   My S4N is still missing from my dashboard.  I cannot get to it at all.  My "SHOUT" is gone which means that we are all stuck with what we wrote in our shout box before the "upgrade".  One of the NING reps who responded to my ticket said they are not familiar with the S4N shout. Who with NING IS?  Please, NING, fix this for me.  And this is not off topic because it is a direct result of the new drop down menu.

[adrian gladney]

A is easier to search. For new and rare users, if you don't know where to look you would have to hunt in B.

[Rev. O.M. Bastet]

That was my opinion too, adrian. What is most important to me is immediate visual access for my scanning eye. Any folding or hiding is a barrier, a door which has to be opened, and that takes extra time I don't want to spend just gaining access to information! Besides which the hunting aspect you mentioned!

[J.Wings]

whats that other little icon going to be?

[Brian Floe]

The Dashboard drop down menu inherits the CSS from the network, and that might be a bad idea. As you can see below my Dashboard menu looks ...weird. And why? The members never see this menu, it does not matter if it "matches" my networks design. And many NCs might think the current solution looks like Ning can't design a decent menu, that it looks amateur like, and again, there is no reason this menu should adopt the networks CSS style cause the members never see it.

 

Perhaps a better solution would be to give all Dashboard menus a universal styling, and give us the option to change it in custom css. How about plain white background, slightly transparent, with black text?

The current Dashboard menu on my network:           A new suggestion:

[Chris]

I have a similar issue on my network - it's to do with the fact that the individual sections of the menu are xg_modules, and take their styling from that. I'm guessing you have rounded corners and shadows on your network's xg_modules? Probably looks great on the main page, but not so good in a menu... Perhaps we need new xg_menu and xg_menu_section classes, as xg_module seems to be getting stretched very thin?

 

I'd personally prefer that all menus inherit the basic feel of my network - otherwise they could clash horribly!

[Brian Floe]

I can live with it personally. I'm referring to Ning image in the eyes of many NCs out there who must be wondering why their menu looks weird.

 

Are you sure the example to the right, a white semi transparent background with black text, would "clash" with your network? White is a neutral color. Wouldn't it be the better option for Ning as a whole to have a uniform menu that is neutral to all networks rather than NCs around Nings networks wondering why Ning can't design a professional looking menu?

If you feel white would clash with your network, I'm suggesting a CSS identifier for the menu so we can style it.

 

To me it's not a big issue, I'm more thinking of Nings image as a whole. My members cannot see the menu so I think it's better to have something universal that is neutral to all networks rather than weird random outcomes that might make Ning look amateur like in the eyes of some NCs.

[J.Wings]

this almost makes me want to un-hide the ning bar

 

almost

[Chris]

I already had this functionality in my own menu bar anyway - a 1 character label on the 'manage' tab, with the most frequently visited management pages in the drop down. Worked great!