New TopMenuSkin for Better Usability and Functionality

TWiki has a new skin called TopMenuSkin that will be part of the upcoming TWiki 5.0 release. The default PatternSkin is very functional and has been refined over time. The new TopMenuSkin is derived from the PatternSkin and adds better usability and a corporate look, inspired by the TWikiNetSkin and Apple.

We had these design goals in mind:

• Conserve screen real estate: Remove sidebar, make top bar more narrow (think Facebook)
• Usability: Intuitive and simple to use, reduce number of clicks
• Functionality: Most important functions easily accessible
• Customizable: Easy to customize menus, per web
• Modern look: Corporate look and feel like TWikiNetSkin

The skin is designed to incorporate a "you are here" breadcrumb into the pulldown menus:

The breadcrumb is: "Home" menu, followed by "Web" menu, followed by a list of parent topics, if any (shown as "P"s), followed by the "View" menu, which is the current topic.

The new skin will be available in TWiki 5.0, which is a few weeks away. The skin is already enabled in our bug tracking database TWiki for you to try out. It will also be installed soon on the twiki.org TWiki.

The skin can be downloaded from the extension repository at Plugins.TopMenuSkin. The Web-specific Menu-Bars section describes how to retrofit existing webs with a customized menu bar. A default menu bar is used unless a specific menu bar topic is created.

We hope you enjoy this new skin. We are looking forward for feedback, please post in the comment section below or at TopMenuSkinDev.

Comments

DavidWeller - 2010-04-25 - via Facebook:

Wow. Twiki sure has come a long way since I used it

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PeterThoeny - 2010-04-25:

Yes, the TWiki community is working hard making the product better. You are invited to participate again! Codev.ReadmeFirst

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