Contextual navigation

[malmazan]

¿Shouldn't navigation be contextual?, i.e. the section where you are is not linkable and looks different.

[feldon23]

Completely disagree. I've always felt that where you are should be a clickable link for refresh and any other purposes I can't think of right now.

It bothers me that the "Contextual navigation" part of the breadcrumb above is not clickable.

[malmazan]

Completely disagree. I've always felt that where you are should be a clickable link for refresh and any other purposes I can't think of right now.

I understand where you are coming from. You might want the default page.
However :
There should always be a graphical way that lets the user know where he/she is in the page
Very often there is no reason to 'reset' a page
There is no reason why both needs could not co-exist. The breadcrumb could be active (when appropiate, not it it adds nothing) and the navbar link would be contextualExamples and screen captures :
User cP
The first text ("Control Panel") link in the column goes to the same place as the "User CP" navbar link. (It sure does not like a link now because vB tends not to underline links that the user may not like like so, but that is another story).


Search
Once i am in the advanced search page, there is no reason for me to click on the "Search" nav bar icon. When the results are shown, the breadcrumb link can already be used to go back to the search form.

The last screen capture shows just an idea (just uses an existing style). The Calendar navbar link is not clickable but you can still 'reset' the Calendars from the breadcrumb. I guess if appropriate the navbar text could still be an active link, bit with a different CSS style with different background and text color to show you where you are.

[Grover]

I guess if appropriate the navbar text could still be an active link, bit with a different CSS style with different background and text color to show you where you are.

Although I have no opinion on all of the things discussed above, I like what you have proposed here:

20928

Makes it more intuïtive for the user indeed.

[feldon23]

Actually no reason it can't be done without any modifications to the vBulletin software. The conditional <if condition="THIS_SCRIPT == 'index'">.