Make Course Menu Sticky

[jdesiderio]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the  Canvas Release Notes (2021-10-16) - Instructure Community

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I know this was already created as an idea a couple of times already but I'd like to open it up again as a new idea. With the recent changes to the Canvas layout it might be a good idea to revisit this.

When scrolling down in a course the course menu will disappear. See screen shots. In the first one you can see that the menu is present.

In the second one you can see the menu is gone. This is very cumbersome especially when on the modules screen or another screen that is really long. I'd like to have the course menu be in a sticky position to the left like it was before.

Please also refer to this closely related idea: https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/5489-freeze-top-left-and-side-banners-of-canvas

[cmvoyk]

Interesting. I say that because I want the opposite. I want more space on the screen for contain, not menus. But going to a new page or refreshing the current page opens the course menu.

By the way, I made a suggestion to have the course menu stay collapsed when collapsed while going to other pages.

[sweetera]

Understood.  Page layout and screen real estate aside, the problem of navigation becomes unworkable for userswhen a content page is long. In many cases, the "next button" is not visible and users behave as if they are just stuck.  Using the browser "back" button is a sign of poor design and it is excruciating to watch faculty or students log out of the entire course and back in simply to get out of an extra-long page. It is also unfortunate for instructional designers to have to alter/dictate entire design process workarounds when the programmed solution was already implemented correctly in the gradebook--for the same reasons.  

[tandrea_owen]

Amen!!! I was just hoping to have the content selector "sticky" or "floating" in creating a question bank!! 

[tandrea_owen]

Floating/sticky menu (left side) and editor (right side) would be awesome. It's pretty cumbersome to build long pages or quiz banks, etc. when you must scroll back to the top to add questions, save, etc. Thanks!! 

[skaufman1]

Very much needed.

[SHEBENE]

I'm not sure if I've already stated this or not but we've made our course nav sticky for some time with some custom JS. If you have someone at your instance that can maintain it, this will do the trick: Stick the left side menu in canvas (until Canvas fixes itself) · GitHub 

 @aleonard ‌ created it for Clark County School District, he posted earlier in this thread about it. Since then it's continued to function great except for one time a Canvas update changed a class (or something, I'm not a coder) and so it broke for a moment but now it's been working to the point that I forgot it was custom.

We briefly made the right side sticky but that caused some issues occasionally and we discarded that as a viable option.

Hope this helps.

[nsweeten]

Thanks for sharing this  @aleonard .  Our school is hesitant with custom JS but it's nice to know that a solution is possible. 

[Renee_Carney]

The Radar‌ idea stage has been removed from the Feature Idea Process.  You can read more about why in the blog post Adaptation: Feature Idea Process Changes.

This change will only impact the stage sort of this idea and will not change how it is voted on or how it is considered during prioritization activities.  This change will streamline the list of ideas 'open for voting', making it easier for you to see the true top voted ideas in one sort, here.

[nsweeten]

Your idea of an option to collapse the menu is actually a separate idea.    The current situation of needing course navigation to remain visible when scrolling long pages wouldn't/doesn't take up more real estate. The space is already committed. Users just don't know where they are--unless they happen to have designed the course. 

Your idea could work concurrent with a sticky menu, ie when the menu is visible it should always be visible--regardless of where the user is on the page scroll.   Voting this idea down only keeps Canvas from fixing a bug basically. 

[bryan_biggers]

At a minimum, this could be an option in Theme Editor.