User:Revolving Bugbear/navbar

Che Nuevara's Wiki Navbar

for Mozilla Firefox, v 1.1 by Che Nuevara

Get the code!

Current implementations:

v 1.1 - new structure (see What's new? below)

v 0.9B - created for WikiProject Buffyverse

v 0.9 - the first uploaded version

What it does

Tired of surfing through Wikipedia endlessly to get to important pages? Can't remember all the Wikipedia shortcuts? Typed "AfD" instead of "WP:AfD" one too many times in the search field? Now there's a solution: Che Nuevara's Wiki Navbar.

The Wiki Navbar is exactly that, a navigation bar for Wikipedia. The most common and useful links on Wikipedia all in one place: the sidebar of your browser.

Specifications

The Navbar is a small HTML document intended to be kept open in Mozilla Firefox's sidebar. It currently features links to many useful patrol and editing pages, as well as community pages and personal pages.

Che Nuevara's Wiki Navbar was written for and tested in Mozilla Firefox v1.5. In theory it should work with any browser with the "Open Bookmark in Sidebar" option, but it has not been tested.

Special thanks to Redvers for unwittingly donating his style formatting to my sidebar.

What's new?

Version 1.1

The structure of the navbar uses drop-down menus contained within the sidebar to vastly increase the size of the linkset. The 1.x implementations of the navbar are meant not to save a user's favorite links, but rather to put the entire Wikipedia under simple and logical command. The menus are arranged intuitively and thus some links appear more than once.

Technically speaking, the code is an unordered list set using the CSS element :hover to form fold-out menus. The element :hover is not standard with Internet Explorer, but it is (to my knowledge) with all other browsers.

The current linkset is my favored linkset, including the two WikiProjects I belong to. As I get feedback and work with the navbar a little more, I will probably update the linkset. As for my WikiProjects, you can edit them out, or just ignore them, until I get around to making a new version.

Installation and use

Copy the text from this page into Textedit or Notepad. Replace all instances of the text USERNAME with your username. This is important: if you do not, then userpage links will not work!

Save the file as "wikinav.htm" or the like. Then open that file in Firefox, bookmark it and select the option "open in sidebar". Open the bookmark when you open Wikipedia. Simply click on any link in the sidebar and it will be loaded in your main frame!

You can now navigate Wikipedia without scrolling or searching. Right clicking on a link and clicking "Open Link in New Tab" will do just that, so you can find important reference pages while editing and not lose your work.

Browsers other than Firefox

All browsers except Microsoft Internet Explorer support the :hover element. This means that versions 1.x+ simply won't work in IE. Sorry.

You can, however, use any version (with the above exception) in any browser, even those without the "open in sidebar" option. A small HTML trick and minor alterations to the code will allow this.

Create an HTML file called navframes.htm (or the like) in the same directory as you created wikinav.htm. Enter the following code into the file and save it:

<HTML>

<HEAD></HEAD>

<frameset cols="160, *" border="1">

    <frame name="nav" src="wikinav.htm" noresize>
    <frame name="main">

</frameset>

</HTML>

Open wikinav.htm in your editor and add the text target="_main" to every "a" tag, turning this:

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page">Main Page</a>

into this:

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page" target="_main">Main Page</a>

Save and close everything, then open navframes.htm in your browser. You're ready to surf!

This method does have its limitations, most notably that you will need to open navframes.htm in each seperate tab that you wish to see the bar in. (Some people may actually appreciate this, as it means you don't have to see the navbar on non-wiki pages if you do not want to.) Additionally, the address bar of your browser cannot be used in any tab that you're running the navbar in, or else you will lose the navbar in that frame.

If you have any information about running the navbar in specific browsers, let me know!

Disclaimers and other information

I, the author of this code, release it in its present rendering under the GFDL. Feel free to edit or use this code in any way which complies with GFDL. This code is intended for the betterment of Wikipedia.

I will take requests for customized versions of the navbar with regards to locations. Leave me a message with the desired links on my talk page and I will provide you with the necessary code. I will not do customized styles.