Has to be revisited
Will likely still be used, but further dev on hold for now
Story
There's a single entry point to all my work: the content I have access to, my personal messages and settings, Magnolia configuration settings and tools as well as technical data such a message logs. This single entry point acts like a menu and offers areas and sub menus for accessing various data sets and functions.
I can switch freely between areas and menu items without loosing context. If I e.g. work on assets, then switch to moderate a number of new forum entries, then switch back to the asset browser again, I'm returned to the exact same point where I left of.
Description of desired behavior
AdminCentral uses a classical menu for providing this single entry point. In order to improve orientation, menu items can be grouped into sets of items logically belonging together. As an example, access to actual content such as pages, assets, documents and structured data is visually separated from access to content-related functionality such as A-B testing and statistics; server and module configuration, templates and security settings are separated from tools and apps such as the Magnolia Store. Menu groups could actually be labeled to improve understanding and clarity, but the current design does not yet foresee that.
If a menu item contains sub menu items, these are hidden at first. If you select the parent item, the sub menu items slide open while possibly already visible sub menu items of another menu item slide close - only one menu item may show its sub menu items at any point in time. Note that this is actually applicable across menu groups. If e.g. Configuration->Modules is open and selected, and you switch to Security, the Configuration menu closes.
Preservation of context
If you switch between menu items and sub menu items, the state of the connected workspace is preserved. This allows to e.g. work on the site structure of one site, then change a template, then go back to the site structure and find yourself at the exact same spot in the page tree.
For further details about this topic as well as necessary limits that have been set, please refer to Preservation of context.
Notifications
All menu items connected to messaging or system components which may get updated may show a visually distinctive badge listing the total number of notifications of their type, which have arrived and not yet been viewed by the logged in user. All emphasizing visual elements are removed, if the user reads the new messages or marks them as read. Once the total count of new messages reaches zero, a corresponding badge on a menu item is removed.
Typical menus
The following examples show how the current menu items would typically be grouped for Magnolia 5. Note that the menu items available will likely be different.