Community Platform Update: Nav updates, full-width UI

[CarolineS]

Greetings, Community!

We have just launched some additional changes to the Community platform, continuing the redesign that we launched on April 1:

• Collapsed left navigation is icon-only
• UI expands the full width of the browser window

Collapsed left navigation is icon-only

Those of you who take the time to collapse the left navigation likely want to maximize the content area as much as possible.

So, when collapsed, the left navigation now displays only icons, taking up a minimum of screen real estate.

PREVIOUSLY: Collapsed navigation displayed icons and text

NOW: Collapsed navigation displays icons only (tooltip appears on hover)

If you’d like to see this for yourself, click the three-line “hamburger” menu in the top left corner to collapse / expand the menu display.

UI expands the full width of the browser window

As in the Meraki dashboard, the Community UI now extends the full width of your browser window to make maximum use of browser real estate, and the content stays aligned to the left when the screen expands. Previously, the content centered itself in the middle of the screen. 

PREVIOUSLY: Community UI did not fill the whole screen

NOW: Community UI expands across your entire window

Note that, in order to keep content readable when the window is very wide, the width of text inside posts is constrained.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on these changes. Please post any feedback in the comments below.

[CloudStrife]

This is much better.

[Inderdeep]

awesome 

[PhilipDAth]

I like the increased use of screen real estate a lot more.

[PhilipDAth]

This isn't working 100% for me.

For example:

https://community.meraki.com/t5/Dashboard-Administration/View-full-case-history/m-p/236748

See how there is a lot of white space to the right of my text.  Also the editor is not able to use the full page width.

[CptnCrnch]

I really like it a lot!

[van604]

the collapse of the side bar is a nice upgrade

[CarolineS]

@PhilipDAth The constrained text width is by design, to make the text more scannable. But, good to know it doesn’t feel correct to you. Would you expect the text and editor to go full width? Partial width, but wider? Something else? Thx!

[PhilipDAth]

I guess I would have expected the editor and messages displayed to occupy the majority of the site space of the centre panel.

At the moment (for me), they are only using half of that space.  It seems like a lot of wasted real estate.

[jimmyt234]

Agreed with @PhilipDAth, keeping a constrained width to the text is weird as the whitespace is seemingly more than the text.

[AlexGill]

Thanks for the real estate!

Question about the regular dashboard -- is there a way too to collapse the left navigation?

[Inderdeep]

I liked this one ... awesome 

[CloudStrife]

Still looks great on my end.