[daisy] Navigation frames or expand/collapse

[Karel Vervaeke]

1. Should be doable for a web developer with knowledge of cocoon and/or
daisy, but frames are just plain ugly ;-)

2. Probably easier than 1.  But you will need two links for documents
with underlying nodes: one to expand/collapse and one to actually go to
the page.  And even if you do this, there will be difficulties because
when using contextualizedTree the underlying documents are not available
while rendering the navigation tree (meaning this case forces you to
have page reloads when using contextualizedTree).

That being said, here are the two solutions I would like to suggest:

(a). Change the navigation tree so that it uses "group nodes" (the
little folder icon in the navigationpart editor).  Group nodes do not
trigger a page reload and expand/collapse without any scrolling.

Here, you would change

> (link) AAA
  > (link) AAA.1
  > (link) AAA.2

with this:

> (group) AAA
  > (link) 'Main page' (goes to the AAA document)
  > (link) AAA.1
  > (link) AAA.2

(b). Add an id and a fragment identifier to every link:
  <a href="123-DSY">link</a> would become
  <a id="/path/to/123-DSY" href="123-DSY#/path/to/123-DSY>link</a>

With this solution you would still get page reloads, but the browser
would scroll so that the selected node is at the top of the page.

This needs to be done in navigation.xsl

IMHO, (a) is the way to go: I think it will result in the most agreeable
user experience (and it does not require any skin changes).

On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 12:57 -0700, WOODROW Clint wrote:
> So far I've gotten Daisy to do just about everything I've
> wanted....minus one little thing I was hoping you folks could help me
> with.  I'm not much of a web expert, and this probably falls into that
> category.
>  
> We've published several manuals in Daisy and, even with
> ContextualizedTree on, the navigation tree gets a little long and hard
> to work with.  The problem is, when you select a node that may have
> another under it, the entire page resets to the top (since it loads
> the new page automatically) and you have to scroll back down to
> continue down the tree.  This is a little annoying and confuses the
> user.
>  
> So I have two ideas:
>  
> 1. Put the navigation tree in its own scrollable frame and just have
> the target open in the right frame.  
> 2. Make the arrow that indicates a node a separate link
> that expands/collapses the menu without actually going to any pages
>  
> Any suggestions on how easiest to do this (or an better
> option) would be appreciated!
>  
>  
> Thanks,
>  
> Clint 
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