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mjau-mjau
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Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Breadcrumbs menu

22 Apr 2022, 06:26

Hi. It's been a long time since I offered to create a new breadcrumbs plugin for X3, but I'm looking into it right now for new X3 release. The challenges with breadcrumbs, is where it will be located on stage (top, bottom, inside content), how it will be aligned (left, center, right) and how it will break (on smaller screens). I will attempt to create a flexible solution that can be styled and positioned with basic custom CSS.

@AYAPOV: How did you do the breadcrumbs in your current pages? Manually?
AYAPOV wrote:For the future real releases, according to albums name lenghts, some thoughts. What if let user some entry field to give short names for breadcrumb purposes (Which may differ from original name, like Gallery name and Title name for the browsers top bar) plus set number of characters, above which original name will truncate to reasonable lenght
The problem here is that X3 can't really get "labels" from all directories in the path. For example, if you have /pathA/pathB/pathC/pathD/, X3 would have to loop through all those directories, load page.json, get label, repeat. Instead, we will need to depend on the actual folder names to create breadcrumb links. For example with the path noted above, breadcrumbs would be pathA > pathB > pathC > pathD. Simple and effective.

Assigning breadcrumbs per page
One might want to assign breadcrumbs for all subfolders inside a folder, but X3 cannot retrieve and inherit settings from parent folders (how far up the tree would it look anyway?). There would be main breadcrumbs plugin settings, where you can enable or disable breadcrumbs for all pages. And then there would be page-settings, where you enable/disable breadcrumbs on a per-page basis.

Plugins as content variable %breadcrumbs%
By default, breadcrumbs plugin would be able to display at very top of page, or at the bottom (above footer). If you want breadcrumbs inside the content (like in your case), I would need to prepare a content-variable %breadcrumbs% that converts into breadcrumbs in the page. Without this feature, it wouldn't be possible to just inject breadcrumbs at some unknown location on page.

Just some notes!
 
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mjau-mjau
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Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Breadcrumbs menu

23 Apr 2022, 00:35

AYAPOV wrote:For the future real releases, according to albums name lenghts, some thoughts. What if let user some entry field to give short names for breadcrumb purposes (Which may differ from original name, like Gallery name and Title name for the browsers top bar) plus set number of characters, above which original name will truncate to reasonable length
Just looking at this again ... I see on your website you have folder /2006_10_03-KSBP-Baraholka/ which is named "Flea markets" in your title and breadcrumbs label. Is there any reason the folder name isn't consistent with the title/label, for example /flea-market/ or /kazakhstan-flea-markets/? I don't see any reason why the folder name should be different and not as descriptive as title.
 
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AYAPOV
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Re: Breadcrumbs menu

07 Jun 2022, 21:42

mjau-mjau wrote:
AYAPOV wrote:For the future real releases, according to albums name lenghts, some thoughts. What if let user some entry field to give short names for breadcrumb purposes (Which may differ from original name, like Gallery name and Title name for the browsers top bar) plus set number of characters, above which original name will truncate to reasonable length
Just looking at this again ... I see on your website you have folder /2006_10_03-KSBP-Baraholka/ which is named "Flea markets" in your title and breadcrumbs label. Is there any reason the folder name isn't consistent with the title/label, for example /flea-market/ or /kazakhstan-flea-markets/? I don't see any reason why the folder name should be different and not as descriptive as title.
The fact is that sometimes it is convenient that the naming of folders differs from the naming of the title. The reason to give bulky system names to folders:

1) In order to match the naming of folders on the local storage, for the convenience of searching in the photo archive for the original photo, and it can be hundreds of terabytes photos already named in a certain way

2) With a large number of files and folders in the gallery - in order to somehow organize the file structure.

In both cases, there is no reason to show bulky system file names in headers to the user.

But at the same time, it would be nice to be able to keep the naming constant regardless of the platform - whether it's a local disk, a gallery site or cloud storage. But we give the user a lighter and more easily readable or SEO friendly short version in breadcrumbs
 
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AYAPOV
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Re: Breadcrumbs menu

07 Jun 2022, 22:06

mjau-mjau wrote: Hi. It's been a long time since I offered to create a new breadcrumbs plugin for X3, but I'm looking into it right now for new X3 release. The challenges with breadcrumbs, is where it will be located on stage (top, bottom, inside content), how it will be aligned (left, center, right) and how it will break (on smaller screens). I will attempt to create a flexible solution that can be styled and positioned with basic custom CSS.
Hi! Finally)) the good news we were expecting! Yes, there are many issues related to providing flexibility.

Thats perfect. Thats why we use Photo. Gallery - fine tuning possibilities with extended global and page-level settings.

Plugins as content variable %breadcrumbs%

Its ok even with the default top-page-version version - just something that user is used to for many years. At the top and at the bottom above footer, will add this standard functionality. We have to admit that a lot of users (70-80% or even more) are with mobile devices these days. And breadcrumbs are so natural and straight-forward way way to navigate directly within massive content with thens of folders and gallery menu items.

Photography portfolio now is about Content. As a professional photographers we face the challenge of modern trend. Modern customers need "Content" to use in their social media platforms. Not "photos" to hang on the wall.

So we Have to treat photos and videos as a data. Massive quantities. A lot of photos are given to customer. And a lot of photos we have to add every day to our portfolios to stay on the top of our industry. Thanks a lot for your efforts with PG! We and our customers are awaiting for breadrumbs functionality. There is no doubt would be as usual - preserving elegent and clean usabilty of PG
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: Breadcrumbs menu

08 Jun 2022, 05:47

AYAPOV wrote:1) In order to match the naming of folders on the local storage, for the convenience of searching in the photo archive for the original photo, and it can be hundreds of terabytes photos already named in a certain way

2) With a large number of files and folders in the gallery - in order to somehow organize the file structure.
The reason I mentioned this, was because your URL (folder name) and title weren't even similar. From a website perspective, the URL should be a short keyword variation of a longer title (for consistency and SEO).

More importantly, breadcrumbs has to use URL path to create texts for each breadcrumb. For instance URL /galleries/birds/penguins/ will create breadcrumbs Galleries > Birds > Penguins. There are a few reasons for this: 1) It's not safe to rely on long page titles to create breadcrumbs, 2) Breadcrumbs should match URL's for best functionality for humans, and 3) We need to create breadcrumbs on a per-page basis from the URL ... It's too heavy (and unnecessary) to look up the tree structure with PHP and extract title or label for all parent pages (for each page with breadcrumbs).

I just wanted to point out, breadcrumbs will use URL (folder names), and you might want to consider this when naming folders.
AYAPOV wrote:But at the same time, it would be nice to be able to keep the naming constant regardless of the platform - whether it's a local disk, a gallery site or cloud storage. But we give the user a lighter and more easily readable or SEO friendly short version in breadcrumbs
I understand your logic, but URL is also part of SEO, and should partially match the page title and content. I mean, this is a website first and foremost, not storage. You can of course use folder names as you like, but it's "better" to have them partially match the page title/content, especially for breadcrumbs.

The rest, all good ... Breadcrumbs will be available in next release, alongside the new cart plugin.
 
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AYAPOV
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Re: Breadcrumbs menu

08 Jun 2022, 19:57

mjau-mjau wrote:I just wanted to point out, breadcrumbs will use URL (folder names), and you might want to consider this when naming folders.

I understand your logic, but URL is also part of SEO, and should partially match the page title and content. I mean, this is a website first and foremost, not storage. You can of course use folder names as you like, but it's "better" to have them partially match the page title/content, especially for breadcrumbs.

The rest, all good ... Breadcrumbs will be available in next release, alongside the new cart plugin.
Good, the cart and breadcrumbs create complete ecosystem! According previous theoretical issues and thoughts on naming conventions - probably the simpler/shorter the better. I will adopt this in all future gallery folders, to be ready for next release!
 
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mjau-mjau
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Joined: 30 Sep 2006, 03:37

Re: Breadcrumbs menu

16 Jul 2022, 03:48