navigation improvement suggestion

[erich73]

I have an idea of how to make the Navigation at BuddyPress simpler:

• we do have the BuddyBar containing the Drop-Down-windows "My Account" and "Notifications".
• We do have the same functions at the Tabs of each user-Profile.

Is there a chance to consolidate those navigation-bars into just ONE navigation ?

[erich73]

put the "Notifications" into the SideBar into the box of "#sidebar-me".

[cnorris23]

Could you expound on this a little? What would be your suggested fix? As it stands, I can see a reason not to do this being the fact that the adminbar can be turned off, which is why you need the profile navigation. If you take nav items out of the adminbar, it almost defeats the point of having the adminbar. These points, however, could all be moot depending on what, exactly, you're suggesting.

[boonebgorges]

A big reason why the buddybar is important is because of multisite support. In a WP Network, probably only the BP_ROOT_BLOG has a real BuddyPress theme, with the navigation buttons you're talking about. So if I have a Multisite installation example.com with BuddyPress, boone.example.com won't have the user profile tabs, etc. Therefore I think that the buddybar is crucial (and, as cnorris23 mentions, it can be turned off if the admin doesn't like it and thinks it's redundant.)

As for eliminating the user navigation in favor of the BuddyBar: It's my impression that users would be confused if the only site navigation were at the very top of the screen in a dropdown menu. This seems like a metaphor used for desktop software, not for websites. If a site owner wants to build a theme that doesn't have the sidebar navigation or the main tabs, they absolutely can. But, for the majority of users, I think that bp-default needs to keep them.

[DJPaul]

I pretty much agree with Boone's comments, so I'm wontfix'ing this.