Traelin,

Breadcrumbs is a tantalizing feature for sure, and it will be interesting to see your approach since each application has a different breadcrumb content logic. Marketplace, for instance, has a great breadcrumb function which is category-based. The Forum, obviously, forums. Blogs? Media, I guess gallery -> album, sub-albums -> media item. Wiki uses the navigation history with dropdowns of all linked wiki pages on that page (which is a very cool bonus feature).

Will the site be online?

If there's interest in a global breadcrumb control, I promise to take a look! That would spare you additional work when v4.next comes out! Procedurally speaking, you could pull the modified projects, zip them and upload to a folder in the Sueetie Library at http://sueetie.com/media/library.aspx (I'll add you to a media upload group when the time comes), that would probably be the most efficient.

Keep us posted,
-Dave

Just wanted to let you all know that I have the breadcrumbs completely working the way I want for the Media Gallery and Forums -- the two most difficult apps to breadcrumb by far for the way I want to do it.

Dave, using brevity, here's what I changed in terms of UI:

1. GSP Admin titling, such that it reads "Media Gallery Admin: <action here> | <site name>" in the page title.
2. GSP Task titling, such that it reads "Media Gallery: <album name> Album - <album name> Album - ... - <action here> | <site name>" in the page title.
3. GSP Admin breadcrumbing I believe all I did was Link(Site Home) -> Link(Gallery Home) -> <action here>.
4. GSP Task breadcrumbing == Link(Site Home) -> Link(Gallery Home) -> Link(<album if any> Album) -> <action here>. (I wanted users to easily be able to navigate back to anywhere in the workflow without clicking Back, or using the main menu.)
5. GSP album breadcrumbing only had one change I believe, which was Link(<album name> Album) -> Media Objects whenever the user clicked on a media object in an album.

Explaining how I *planned* on handling the above differs greatly from the rabbit hole in which I fell, which is to say really convoluted for my tastes, in terms of maintenance. I handled the core logic in albummenu's code behind but I also created client scripts via managers on some of the Admin and Task pages using the same logic (i.e. cut-paste).

Forum breadcrumbing is harder to explain, but suffice it to say it now does what I want, albeit I hate its maintenance potential as much as the above. I would have to send you the project whenever I get the chance so you can see what I mean. Forum page titling I revamped as well using PageTitleForumModule.cs, but unfortunately that primarily helped me with Admin and Moderation pages, not all other pages.

In PageLinks.cs in YAF.Controls I only had to make the following change to persist it to the client:
writer.Write("<script type=\"text/javascript\" language=\"javascript\">var _crumbsAry = new Array();");
//writer.WriteLine(@"<div id=""{0}"" class=""yafPageLink"">".FormatWith(this.ClientID));

//bool bFirst = true;

foreach (DataRow row in linkDataTable.Rows)
{
//if (!bFirst)
//{
// writer.WriteLine(@"<span class=""linkSeperator"">&nbsp;&#187;&nbsp;</span>");
//}
//else
//{
// bFirst = false;
//}

string title = this.HtmlEncode(row["Title"].ToString().Trim());
string url = row["URL"].ToString().Trim();

if (url.IsNotSet())
{
// If the current breadcrumb is "All Forums", we want to display the top level
// forum name, which should be "Forums Home" or something similar, so that users
// don't get confused.
if (title == boardsTitle)
{
writer.Write("_crumbsAry.push(\"{0}\",\"{1}\");".FormatWith(homeTitle, ""));
}
else
{
writer.Write("_crumbsAry.push(\"{0}\",\"{1}\");".FormatWith(title, ""));
}
//writer.WriteLine(@"<span class=""currentPageLink"">{0}</span>".FormatWith(title));
}
else
{
// If the current breadcrumb is "All Forums", we want to display the top level
// forum name, which should be "Forums Home" or something similar, so that users
// don't get confused.
if (title == boardsTitle)
{
writer.Write("_crumbsAry.push(\"{0}\",\"{1}\");".FormatWith(homeTitle, url));
}
else
{
writer.Write("_crumbsAry.push(\"{0}\",\"{1}\");".FormatWith(title, url));
}
//writer.WriteLine(@"<a href=""{0}"">{1}</a>".FormatWith(url, title));
}
}

writer.WriteLine("</script>");

Like I said above, I personally think I could extend the pages to handle titling and breadcrumbing instead of the hacky way I did it just as a proof of concept. But it works perfectly for me and at the very least it can give one an idea of how to accomplish it with slick changes later. I attached some sample images that hopefully encapsulates what I was thinking?

Edited by user Saturday, April 7, 2012 3:16:29 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Added some commentary and images.

Oh yes, indeed if I didn't comment code I would get lost. We always learned in undergrad and grad school that commenting is vital for O&M; however, I have to use it given my absent-mindedness. Once I get the site breadcrumbing with a universal UI, then I can move on to branding as well as moving some stuff around on the pages. This is not to say that upgrading would be a necessarily fluid process for me; I would need to first get 4.0 the way I want it and then use a sandbox to build out later versions.

One thing I'd like is an equivalent ACT-to-jQuery DropDownExtender, such that I can implement a search textbox similar to yours but one that would allow the user to select a site search or numismatic DB search via radio options. One probably exists but right now I need to focus on one task at a time. :)

Traelin,

That's very good of you. I wish the Analytics Points system was online so you could be adequately rewarded! :-)

I know we're not going to get it into the queue with so many other To-Do's for v4.1. I can't wait to see it in action, though, and I'm sure others want to see it, too. You'll probably get hit with source requests then.

Thanks!
Dave