Reading/Web/Desktop Improvements/Features/Table of contents/Article tools and Main menu

One of the changes we’re most excited about is moving the table of contents to the side of the article, and making it sticky so that it’s available while you scroll down the page. We’ve learned through research and testing that this change will benefit people by allowing them to get an overview of the article as soon as they land on the page, and will help them navigate the article more easily throughout their reading experience.

The majority of the feedback was positive. Most community members like the new location and functionality of the table of contents, and support the change overall. As with most changes to the interface, moving the table of contents comes with some challenges. The main challenge community members raised was: where should we put the sidebar menu, which is currently located in the space that we’re moving the table of contents to? Below we explain our proposal for addressing this challenge, which will also be the subject of our next round of prototype testing.

Our short-term solution
As a short term solution the entire sidebar will remain available in its current location, will remain collapsible, and the state (i.e. open vs. collapsed) of the sidebar will continue to persist between pages (so if you open it, it will stay open as you navigate around the site). What will change is: when it is open, it will push the table of contents down the page. Here is a screen recording of how it will work:

We don’t think this is the optimal solution, it is more like a quick fix that will allow us to release the table of contents and keep moving forward. And we understand how this might feel like a step backwards to some, because the table of contents is now further down the page than it was previously. But don’t worry — we too think we can do better. Below is our proposal for a long-term solution.

Our proposal
A few things we learned from recent community feedback, and from data collection, are informing our proposal:


 * 1) Most editors like the new location of the table of contents
 * 2) For some editors it is important to have article tools (e.g. What links here, Related changes, Wikidata item, etc.) available as soon as they land on a page
 * 3) Most of the global navigation items in the main menu (e.g. Current events, Contents, etc.) are used infrequently
 * 4) Some editors have large screens and would like the interface to make better use of the space on the far side of the article

Additionally, something that we’ve been trying to accomplish throughout this project is moving things into logical places. We think it makes sense for all of the article tools to be in one area, rather than the current situation where some of them are in the sidebar and others are in the article toolbar above the article. There are two main parts of our proposal:


 * 1) Splitting the sidebar into two menus: a main menu with global links, and an article tools menu with article-specific links
 * 2) Moving the article tools to the far side of the article, so that they are near the other article tools (History, Edit, Move, etc.)