Improve adding and managing links with the Link UI within the Navigation block

[annezazu]

What problem does this address?

This week, Anna Morris shared the following feedback in the FSE Outreach Program's channel:

But mainly, selecting what page to add feels really hard. So, finding the News page (for a client site) for example took ages, it brings up everything with News in. If I wasn't totally sure of the name of a page (actually it was called "blog" I actually had to go and find the page and check, and come back and search. I've never had to do that before. I think there's something with the hirachy of info it shows that's off maybe? Also not being able to go... well it's a page... what pages do I have in a list (like before) is somehow hard for me cognitively perhaps. Finally, all that info of listing pages/posts/cateogries etc with the seached term in in a little dropdown thing was hard, it's fiddly and small and exhausting

At the core of this is the experience of what appears upon searching for something to add to the navigation block. Right now, it's a bit odd what's displayed. Here are two very simple examples:

I search for "test" and "testing duotone" comes up before the post actually titled "test":

I search for "contact" and the one with the worse permalink (/contact-2) appears first:

It seems we might be overly biasing for recently updated rather than name matches?

What is your proposed solution?

I'm not quite sure! This is too high level and obvious to say but add more granularity to the search functionality. I imagine this problem will likely ease when one can bulk add items/see more at once: #31667

[talldan]

Thanks for bringing this to attention. There have been some relevant discussions before. You mentioned the bulk linking interface which is one.

I remembered @jasmussen also had some proposals in this issue - #34041 (comment).

[jasmussen]

The URL dialog is definitely a complicated piece of UI. Ideally it's remains a singular component that can be used across contexts in the UI, meaning it needs to be able to search across all buckets of content:

At the same time, some contexts like navigation items or social links would benefit from strictly filtering the output:

Including search in the navigation item filter makes it a bit taller, but maybe it can thread the needle if we let the field be scrollable:

[getdave]

I agree with everything discussed here. I've renamed to make it a little clearer as to the purpose of the Issue and also added to the Nav block tracking issue.

[kevin940726]

Seems like the order of the results mentioned in the original issue is queried from the search rest API. Perhaps we can add orderBy to the API so that we can customize the suggestions query.

[getdave]

Seems like the order of the results mentioned in the original issue is queried from the search rest API. Perhaps we can add orderBy to the API so that we can customize the suggestions query.

Let me check this.

@kevin940726 I don't see an order parameter available on that endpoint.

See also https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/blob/541b4eb6462c8f48e235590a9be79ebc4954f66e/src/wp-includes/rest-api/endpoints/class-wp-rest-search-controller.php

[kevin940726]

@getdave Oh, I mean we should add the missing functionality of the orderBy parameter to the rest API to support this. 😅

[annezazu]

Logging this feedback (and ideas) related to this functionality as a part of the FSE Outreach Program's recent exploration, Site Editor Sneak Peek:

Adding a link to Navigation.
Currently adding a new link to Navigation one can begin to write the name of the link and various options show up.
Example. I write new, and see a post, a page and an URL show up. Scrolling briefly I see + Create draft page: new.
Example 2. I do not write anything in the “Search or type url” add a Nav link field. Just below the Search field I see a Recently updated. It shows me 3 posts.
What if we have multiple small button toggles (on/off) sitting beside each other below the “Search or type url” Which says Pages Posts Categories Tags … One could click to toggle one or more of these toggles. Clicking Pages toggle one would see a list which one can scroll of pages. Clicking Pages and Posts toggles one would see a list of pages and posts one can scroll through.

[getdave]

Thanks @annezazu. There has been discussion of enhancing and improving the Link UI in regard to providing a better interface for discovering and adding different types of link content. The idea suggested is noted 🙇

[getdave]

This is now being discussed in #49091

[annezazu]

Noting feedback from the Front Page Fun call for testing for the FSE Outreach Program:

Personally, I miss having all my content (posts, pages, categories) and navigation options visible at once, all the time, without having to see a bunch of other options for other tasks. It’s just easier than clicking three or four times in the site editor UI, in multiple places, just to see what content is available to add as a menu item.

While I understand we've moved away from a bulk add option, it still is a big ask to expect folks to remember the name of the posts/pages/categories they want to add and creates a lot of additional steps.

[getdave]

I agree @annezazu. The means of finding pages via search is a big ask. I think some means of seeing all the Pages on your site in a UI would be a great help.

However the list of priorities for the Nav block for 6.3 is here.