Possible simplification of the menu bar

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reikiman
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Possible simplification of the menu bar

With our discussion of it being slow to load pages.. one item to look at is the menu bar. The menubar is partly driven with javascript and the number of items in the menubar might be larger than is necessary to be useful.

I'd like some advice on whether to simplify the menubar, if so what items need to be in it, etc.

At the moment I have just had an inspiration for the Handbooks part of it. It's to do a two-pronged reorganization of both the handbooks and that part of the menu. It should result in removing a few items from the menubar and maybe make the handbooks easier to navigate.

The handbooks menu could be listing:-

  • Downloads
  • Electric Bicycles
  • Electric Scooters (maybe split into two .. for small and large scooters)
  • Electric Motorcycles
  • Full size EV's
  • Other EV's
  • Components
  • Electronics Background
  • Legal

The handbooks themselves could be reorganized with those as the top-level handbook items.

As it is the handbooks always seemed a bit haphazard.

garygid
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

It is not likely that a couple of items more or less on the drop-down menus will make any noticable difference in load-time (but might be helpful for organizational reasons).

The long (and variable) delay seems to be at the end, after all the visible parts of the page are loaded and shown.

Doing a Reply or Edit brings up the "edit" page, which has a VERY long (at least several minutes) delay. Do you also experience this long delay?

Cheers, Gary
XM-5000Li, wired for cell voltage measuring and logging.

reikiman
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

Ah, hmm, simplifying the 'Forum' part of it might help as well.. e.g. drop off the submenus completely.

But, hmm, my version of that menu is more extensive because as a moderator there is a whole Administration section you don't see that has a zillion entries.

Edit page takes maybe 30 seconds to render.. not several minutes. That page has a lot of gadgetry in it with a lot of javascript driving the gadgetry. Further the moderator version of that page has more stuff on it than the regular version.

garygid
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

My edit/reply page renders and is usable quickly ... but tends to "never" finish loading.

Not yet finished.

Suggestion:
Make another ID for yourself that is a normal user, to better test and experience what we do.

Reply is still not finished loading.

Cheers, Gary
XM-5000Li, wired for cell voltage measuring and logging.

Mik
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

Doing a Reply or Edit brings up the "edit" page, which has a VERY long (at least several minutes) delay. Do you also experience this long delay?

Just tested this: 8 seconds to open reply, 5 sec to open quote.

Edit: It took about 7 sec to open the edit page!

This information may be used entirely at your own risk.

There is always a way if there is no other way!

Mik
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

The drop down menues do not work at all on my "Pocketsurfer".

I suspect that might be the case with a number of hand held devices. It does not bother me at all.

I have the "Recent Posts" page set as a bookmark and always start on it.

This information may be used entirely at your own risk.

There is always a way if there is no other way!

garygid
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

I agree, a GREAT improvement!

The long delay after loading the visible part of the Edit (or Reply) page is gone at the moment (so is the unnecessary-here right-side list).

Did you do something to "fix" these pages? What?

Thanks!!!

Cheers, Gary
XM-5000Li, wired for cell voltage measuring and logging.

reikiman
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

Ah.. I just asked this question over on "the site is slow and sucks" thread ...

Yeah, last night I turned on a caching module (that, honestly, I'd thought was already on) which is supposed to improve performance. According to the monitoring service the page load times are less bad but still not what I'd want them to be.

There's another module that's supposed to do even better performance boost through caching. I may try that in a couple days.

garygid
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

Did you remove the Right-Side Lists from the Edit and Reply pages?

Cheers, Gary
XM-5000Li, wired for cell voltage measuring and logging.

reikiman
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

Sure, they didn't seem necessary there.

Webmaster
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Re: Possible simplification of the menu bar

FYI - I've done most of this.. haven't yet done the Handbooks part. The list of forum's has been simplified a bit, and in one case an old forum that was still listed has been removed. Adding an "All XYZZY" to appropriate forums made sense and was easy enough to do. The phrase "Latest in" was redundant and has been removed.

- David Herron, http://longtailpipe.com/

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