Joomla 1.6 module assignment from menu items – our thoughts and ideas
There has been a lot of activity on Joomla 1.6 lately and based on the version I tested a couple of weeks ago, the project is really progressing nicely.
One of the recent reviews of Joomla 1.6 had a couple of screenshots of the new features. One of those was of the new module assignment from a menu item.
Apart from the more obvious updates (like the much needed ACL, categorization, backend mvc, etc etc), I think the ability to assign modules from a menu item is one of the things I personally am looking forward to the most.
The new layout lists modules on the right under the other params (see screenshot). This is fine when you only have a few modules, but what happens when you have more?
I realize this is only a preview release and this will likely be revised before the final release, but here are a couple of ideas that popped into my head when I pondered what would make managing modules from a menu item even easier.
1.) Open modules assignment in lightbox
This would allow for more real estate to be used and thus including all the below filters without making the interface too cluttered or busy.
2.) Add ajaxified pagination…
…with the option to set number of modules to display (as with the current module manager), including show all.
I love the addition of the “show all” option that debuted in 1.5 and i think allowing users to limit the results, or optionally view all would mean that the having a large number of modules would not be an issue.
3.) Add live search filtering
This is an obvious one, as it’s hard to beat being able to type the name of the module you are looking for and have the results filter accordingly.
4.) Add options to…
- select all
- select all in position
- select all of type
- published status
- access level or position
The key to this is making it really easy to find and manage modules to show for a given menu item.
What do you guys think? Useful or not? Will these make it into Joomla 1.6? I sure hope so!
UPDATE: Andrew Eddie, the longest serving developer for the Joomla project, replied on Twitter: “That’s pretty close to what I had in mind for the next phase 
Nice one.”
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Tags: development, Joomla
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In my humble opinion it would be the most friendly solution to assign module to a page (article).
From a usability point of view, users…
This would make Joomla far more flexible and usable.
And als include the option to create or assign the Menu item.
That would be super.
Greetz,
Typoguy´s last blog ..Nieuwe website Gijs Heutink advocaten
Hey Typoguy,
Thanks for stopping by
Assigning modules via menu items makes sense, as it covers all aspects of your site (not just articles) and is generally how you end up on a page anyways. You could have multiple links to any given article and as the context for including that article may be different, you might want to display different modules for each.
Cheers,
Chris