Enable Cwicly menu block to allow filtering of output

When attempting to add descriptions to menu items (similar to the strategy outlined here: Displaying WordPress Menu Item Descriptions – Theme Foundation), we noticed that nothing changes in the Cwicly menu block.

A menu item filter being added will allow Cwicly users to customise the menu adding greater flexibility.

Thank you.

@Louis, I am just checking whether displaying of the menu descriptions will be included in the upcoming mega menu / nav block, as if so, it will cover this feature request.

I am just thinking of two separate use cases.

One is that the client will edit their menus separately and the other is that we will configure the menus directly within the template.

It seems that the second use case is thoroughly and completely covered by the new blocks.

Perhaps there is scope if not already supported to make dynamic data display in the new menu blocks to cover the first use case.

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Hey @Marius, it seems that all open requests related to the menu will be addressed in the upcoming update, based on the preview video. However, we still don’t know what kind of dynamic capabilities the menu will have from the @StrangeTech client-side perspective in terms of data input.

Can you share more details about your requirements @dranzer @StrangeTech?
What approaches do you have in mind?

Similar to the existing menu block, where you can select a menu, I was envisaging being able to select a menu and it autopopulate the new Cwicly nav block.

Obviously there are many considerations to this, that may include keeping the items in sync or how to add other items that may not be in the menu, etc.

On the other hand, if done well, it could be seamless and very useful.

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Same as above. The client may mess up things if given access to the header/templates for editing the navigation. The Appearance → Menu approach is somewhat safer and easier for them to add, remove, and organize menu items in different menu locations.

So everyone seems to agree from the video that all menu building will be manual?

This is exactly why I never use menu plugins…
It really makes no sense to me to go back to “manual” menu, be it for maintenance or client editing (except maybe for a few very simple sites that will not change so much in the future).

What I would like better is some responsive menu custom template that fetches actual WP menus, and which would enable the use of:

  • item description,
  • new icon/image/featured image field,
  • groups,
  • CSS custom classes.

It’s OK for me if menu design is not a super complex mega menu, I care more about ergonomics for the visitor, ease of use for client, and maintainability.

I understand the need of such element for oneshot site building by non-tecchy people, I’m just not the target, I guess.

What I hope is that it can be the starting point for a future hybrid solution where some standard custimizable menu templates are added to the block, which would apply common designs to selected WP menu :wink:

Whatever the case is, even though the preview suggests that it’s a static/manual approach (at this point it’s pure speculation).

Here is my take:

I couldn’t care less about native WP menu integration.
How often does a client change a menu?
Is this minor point worth it to accept limitations and other downsides?
How wouldn’t be the role editor not be able to put this concern aside?

In general, the cumbersome backend tinkering where I have to change frontend related things which I can’t even see updating live.
Cwicly is an FSE tool, so I appreciate the this step, even if it might not be perfect (yet).
Again, none of us actually got a hand on it already, so just relax.

What I really care about - and what’s not possible with the native WP menu integration:

  • no design restrictions without overcomplicating things
  • import designs from the design library with an out of the box working and editable menu
  • complete visual building/editing experience
  • no workarounds or hacks which actually belong to the past, thanks to Cwicly

For all users who do not agree here.
Some tweaks to the current menu block could be considered, like CSS classes, item description, etc.

Perhaps the role editor could cover some parts of the experience, but it is more that some non-technical clients do not have the desire, the patience or the time to learn something new. We are simply thinking of and providing for their needs rather than expecting them to adapt to ours.

Cwicly is good for helping keep things relaxed - I definitely was much less relaxed being limited by other tools in the past. I only started with a simple question about whether or not this was covered in the upcoming work and I think we are all curious and excited to see how it will work.

Yes, the implementation looks very promising and seems to allow a lot of flexibility and design possibilities. It will be a welcome addition to the Cwicly feature set.

Indeed, and if those were added, you could even potentially nest a menu within the new nav block (for mega submenus for example).

After many months of using the new Nav block, it fulfils almost all of our needs with only a few missing features.

The display of descriptions in the dropdowns is excellent and we have control over the styling, so when using either a manually constructed Nav menu with dropdowns or a multi-level menu loaded from the WordPress Appearance > Menus area, this works perfectly.

Screenshot 2023-10-10 at 23.10.42

Unfortunately there is still one use case where we still need the filtering of the Menu block or an enhancement to the Nav block.

Currently we have a “My Account” menu that has an icon and a dropdown. To achieve this, we have used a Nav Dropdown with Custom Content enabled and a Menu block inside. This works very well except for displaying of the descriptions.

Screenshot 2023-10-10 at 23.09.46

Currently as far as we can tell, there is no way to display descriptions under each item in a dropdown with a dynamically loaded menu. Both the Menu block and Nav block do not display descriptions at the top level, so even though they are laid out vertically, this doesn’t work.

If anyone has any clever suggestions or workarounds, please let us know.

The only solution I can think of that may work is to make the My Account menu a normal menu item within the main menu and then use relative styles to hide the label and show the icon for it.

This would not be applicable to all use cases but for this case it may work.

Unfortunately due to the lack of background image support for relative styles, adding the icon dynamically is not currently possible using that approach.

Also, because each menu item doesn’t have a unique identifier, even if we could add a background image, we would have to rely on the item index in the relative styles to be able to target individual items, which is not ideal for dynamic menus with items that are shown and hidden based on whether the user is logged in or not.