Question: From a UI point of view, how usable is the way TTM currently presents a large taxonomy with lots of content? Using current code, what's the practical limit on the number of parent terms, child terms, and node teasers that can be displayed in the initial presentation before the user starts complaining?

This is not necessarily a feature request, but rather an attempt to get some discussion going about how best to do the initial presentation of large taxonomies, particularly where the taxonomy terms have lots of content attached to them.

TTM is a great module, but I'm wondering if its usefulness with large taxonomies with lots of content would be enhanced if more and different ways of doing the initial presentation were offered. One thought I have is to provide an option to build an A-B-C menu of the top-level terms, and then be able to drill down from there. Example:

Where the taxonomy was like this:

-Birds
--Pheasant
--Sparrow
--Wren
-Cats
--Maine Coon
--Persian
--Siamese
-Dogs
--Bloodhound
--Chihuahua
--Doberman
-Rats
--Giant
--Kangaroo
--Norwegian

Offer a dynamically built initial presentation like this:

A-C    D-F    ...    P-R    ...    etc.

Clicking on one of the above letter ranges then brings up the top-level terms within it, so clicking on A-C would result in a page like this:

A-C    D-F    ...    P-R    ...    etc.

-Birds
--Pheasant
--Sparrow
--Wren
-Cats
--Maine Coon
--Persian
--Siamese

or maybe (depending on a "depth" configuration option?) just this:

A-C    D-F    ...    P-R    ...    etc.

+Birds
+Cats

then clicking on "Birds" would result in this:

A-C    D-F    ...    P-R    ...    etc.

-Birds
--Pheasant
--Sparrow
--Wren

Note that the A-B-C menu would remain at the top of the page so navigation could start over with any other letter range, and the bottom portion of the screen would change to show what's selected. (I've never used Panels, but maybe this would be an application of them?)

The basic idea would be to start with high-level grouping of the highest terms, then to drill down from there. Maybe this already exists in another module, but I can't find it, so can we get a dialog going about this?

Comments

rcrowther’s picture

Well, my offering...

a) It steps beyond the idea of 'menu to the screen',
b) ...but why not, because it's a nice user-orientated organization?

I'm thinking, it implies two ideas.

1) That terms can be super-organised, as the module does with nodes (alphabetically/reverse order/etc.)
2) That there might be some sort of extra function, or plug in module, which can pull links out to make small menus (the A-D / D-G organization is pretty much a menu, laid out horizontally). that jump a user into larger batches of 'menu'.

Any other thoughts?

rcrowther’s picture

More thinkin'

You can approximate this right now, imperfectly.

1) Imperfect step. Organise your taxonomy with base items on alphabetic lines A-C D-F ... P-R ... etc.
2) Grow treemenus from those items.
3) Make up a little Drupal hardcoded menu, and point the links at the Treemenus.

Imperfect, I admit, as the Taxonomy has alphabetic data and is inflexible. Might be ok for some, though, and as a basis for ideas and experiments.

Also, Menu Block has some interesting ideas about 'menu chasing'. Can't use it on Treemenus (current versions, anyhow) and only in blocks. But those interested might like to load Taxonomy Menu and Menu Block and have a look.