I’m not sure what the right terminology is: navigation bar, action bar, or toolbar. But what I mean is that floating bar at the bottom of the screen on desktop.
WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND
Give users the options to customize the toolbar by:
- selecting what buttons are included in the toolbar
- deciding where the toolbar is displayed on desktop (as a floating bar as it is currently, or docked in the sidebar)
HOW COULD IT BE DONE
Customizing the buttons on the toolbar requires a new option in Settings > Preferences that lets users decide to enable/disable various buttons (navigation, new object, graph, search, settings, etc). Ideally, we would even be able to select the order of the buttons.
For the location of the toolbar, I see two options:
- Transform the toolbar into a widget, and let the user add that widget where they want in the sidebar like any other widgets. This would also require an option to disabling the floating toolbar (probably as a toggle in Settings > Preferences to “On desktop, display floating toolbar”.
- Add the option in Settings > Preferences to select where to “Display toolbar”, with options like “Floating” and “Docked in sidebar”.
REAL WORLD USE CASES
We don’t all use the same buttons on the toolbar (I never use graph and rarely go into settings, which means that this prime real estate in the toolbar is wasted).
Additionally, with the customizable widgets in the sidebar, the sidebar is slowly becoming where I go for any sort of navigation or frequent actions. So having to think that for some navigation or actions I should go to the sidebar, and for others I should go to the floating toolbar adds to the cognitive load. I just want everything in the same place (I would personally place that toolbar at the top of my sidebar).
