WikiNavigation

From RCC 2007

Merging the best of both worlds; a structured menu system -- and a wiki.

The following thread recently took place on this wiki, it soon became a topic at the Camp

• Question: Is there a way to continue clicking next, next, next to view each item in a category in succession? For example, this would allow you to view each topic page in succession, without having to keep click the back arrow to return to the menu each time.
• Answer: Not unless someone sets up such a path manually. (how would you do that, also it would be nice to be able to leave your mouse in the same place, when clicking next, next, next).
  • My Response: Well maybe this is a topic for the Camp, on let's say Wiki Usability. How to combine a structured menu system along with a wiki. Recently I've been awakened by MediaWiki & starting to think it may already do it, I just haven't figured out how yet. I'd be surprised if I were the first one to want this.
    • the manual answer is like the tourbus, but keeping your mouse in the same place would be more difficult - seems like a lot of manual work for very little gain - love the Wiki Usability topic!
      • It would depend how much hand coding of each each page was necessary, for example, it's pretty minimal to assign a page to a category(s). It would be a snap if it were this simple.
      • The gain would be the capability of a visitor to never move the mouse, and go click, click, click to the next, next, next page -- seeing many pages in succession, without ever having to move the mouse. Look at how much work they are going to now, continually moving the mouse to the browser back-arrow, then locating, moving to & clicking on the next page, then do it all over again -- back to the back-arrow, locate, click, and so on. So with some up-front coding by one person, one time, numerous other people would benefit.
      • It would be nice for them to be able to rearrange the pages in a "stream" (or whatever you want to call a group of associated pages). For example, if there were 10 pages in a "stream" that it made sense to click, click, click through, to simply display them alphabetically may not be a valid assumption, so a visitor should be able to re-order the pages within the stream -- so that future users would then benefit, and so on.
      • If you're going to have a "next" button, why not have a "previous" button, and perhaps an "up-one-level" button.
      • Why shouldn't ONE GIVEN PAGE appear in multiple streams? For example, a "billing" page could appear in the "accounting" stream, as well as the "new customer" stream. I mean, in a way we already have this capability with "categories", but I don't think we have the "next" and "previous" and "up a level" buttons.
    • Sorry, when I say "manual" I mean editing each page and manaually putting in a link to the "next" page. You can do that right now without writing software or having access to the server. All of hte ideas above are great and will be fund to talk about at RCC, but aren't what I meant by "manual."
      • I understand what you mean, thanks. And this brings up another point... If you want to put 10 pages in a "stream" (or category, or whatever you want to call it), why should you have to touch all 10 pages? If 100 or 1000 people wanted to put a particular page in their stream, the bottom of that page would be pretty busy -- perhaps with useful information -- but perhaps not. So why can't my stream of 10 pages all be in one prev-next file, which would make it a lot easier to maintain, and less likely to get hosed by somebody editing doing edits, if they didn't understand the impact of what they're doing.
      • Further, why shouldn't my stream of 10 pages encompass information/pages from many wikis? This can be done right now with frames, I guess, but there's something missing here, I don't know what, it's just not optimal. But maybe it could be. Maybe all we need to do this is have a super-wiki menu type service that allows individuals to glob their 10 pages together as they see fit. And perhaps publish their menus, perhaps even make their menus editable, in a sort of wiki fashion.
      • This all started out with me just wanting to quickly view the 77 pages in the people category. Without having to click back-arrow, locate, move to & click on the next person, click on the back-arrow again, and so on. But to do something this simple, to view the all of the categorized pages on one wiki it would take much more work than ought to be necessary in an ideal world. As such people don't drive wikis as much as they would otherwise.
      • Another thing, even on web sites with next-prev buttons, I've noticed all too often that the next-prev buttons are at the bottom of a variable amount of text. This means I have to keep moving my mouse around. It would be cooler if the next-prev buttons were at the top AND the bottom. Because so often I can look at the first paragraph and I know I don't want to read any more, but yet I still have to scroll down, locate the next button, and click on it. And I think to myself, "wouldn't it be cooler to just leave my mouse in one place. Here's an example of a trial balloon web site I did in March-2006, which more or less allows you to leave your mouse in one place.

• Visitor Specific Navigation: How about if each person had the ability to click on next, next, next through the pages that interested them. Without being tied to the navigation of the wiki they are on, which may be continually changing. So when user JBlow logs in, they can quickly cycle through the 10 pages they're s interested in -- then begone, having spent much less time, and never once clicking on a back-arrow.

• Recent Changes: Did you ever wonder why you have to keep clicking on the back-arrow so many times, in order to view the recent changes? How about being able to click on next, next, next to continue viewing the previous changes. With diffs and all. I'll bet it would cut the amount of time you're spending in half.

• Question: Is there a way to put a code snippet on each Topic page -- that shows which pages link to that topic. Then as people link to their topics of interest, from their own personal page, their names would automatically appear on each topic page. And yes, I know there's a "what links here" on the left menu, but I think it would be cool to just list the actual pages, out in the body of the page.
• Answer: You could accomplish this by making each topic an actual category, with each person including themselves in that category.
  • My Response: Interesting, thank you. How about I just take the concept of topics & categories out of the equation, with this rephrased question. Question: On any page, is there a way to display a list of all the other pages which link to this page? I mean I know you can click on "what links here" on the menu, but why not just display it on the page itself. (That's my manufacturing background showing through).
    • not that I'm aware of - someone could code a mediawiki extension, but I'm not aware of such a beast already existing