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Navigation

A clear and concise navigation structure is an important aspect of good project documentation. Zensical provides several options to configure the behavior of navigational elements, including tabs and sections, as well as features such as instant navigation and instant previews.

Additional navigation can be configured in the footer.

Configuration

Instant navigation

When instant navigation is enabled, clicks on all internal links will be intercepted and dispatched via XHR without fully reloading the page. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.instant"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.instant

The resulting page is parsed and injected and all event handlers and components are rebound automatically, i.e., Zensical now behaves like a Single Page Application. Also, the search index is persisted through navigation, which is especially useful for large documentation sites.

The site_url setting must be set

Note that you must set site_url when using instant navigation, as instant navigation relies on the generated sitemap.xml which will be empty if this setting is omitted.

Instant prefetching

Instant prefetching is a new experimental feature that will start to fetch a page once the user hovers over a link. This reduces the perceived loading time for the user, especially on slow connections, as the page will be available immediately upon navigation. Enable it with:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.instant",
    "navigation.instant.prefetch"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.instant
    - navigation.instant.prefetch

Progress indicator

In order to provide a better user experience on slow connections when using instant navigation, a progress indicator can be enabled. It will be shown at the top of the page and will be hidden once the page has fully loaded. You can enable it in your configuration with:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.instant",
    "navigation.instant.progress"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.instant
    - navigation.instant.progress

The progress indicator will only show if the page hasn't finished loading after 400ms, so that fast connections will never show it for a better instant experience.

Instant previews

Instant previews allow the user to preview another site of your documentation without navigating to it. They can be very helpful to keep the user in context. Instant previews can be enabled on any header link with the data-preview attribute:

Link with instant preview
``` markdown
[Attribute Lists](#){ data-preview }
```

Attribute Lists

Limitations

Instant previews are still an experimental feature and currently limited to headerlinks. This means, you can use them on any internal link that points to a header on another page, but not other elements with id attributes.

Automatic previews

The recommended way to work with instant previews is to use the Markdown extension that is included with Zensical, as it allows you to enable instant previews on a per-page or per-section level for your documentation:

[project.markdown_extensions.zensical.extensions.preview]
configurations = [
    { targets.include = [
        "customization.md",
        "setup/extensions/*"
    ]}
]

markdown_extensions:
  - material.extensions.preview:
      configurations:
        - targets:
            include:
              - customization.md
              - setup/extensions/*

The above configuration is what we use for our documentation. We've enabled instant previews for our changelogs, customization guide and for all Markdown extensions in the setup guide.

Full configuration example 
[[project.markdown_extensions.zensical.extensions.preview.configurations]]
sources.include = [...]
sources.exclude = [...]
targets.include = [...]
targets.exclude = [...]

markdown_extensions:
  - material.extensions.preview:
      configurations:
        - sources: # (1)!
            include:
              - ...
            exclude:
              - ...
          targets: # (2)!
            include:
              - ...
            exclude:
              - ...

  1. Sources specify the pages on which instant previews should be enabled. If this setting is omitted, instant previews will be enabled on all pages. You can use patterns to include or exclude pages. Exclusion is evaluated on top of inclusion, so if a page is matched by both, it will be excluded.

    Note that you can define multiple items under the configurations setting, which allows to precisely control where instant previews are shown.

  2. Targets specify the pages to which instant previews should be enabled. This is the recommended way to enable instant previews.

The site_url setting must be set

Note that you must set site_url when using instant previews, as instant previews rely on the generated sitemap.xml which will be empty if this setting is omitted.

Anchor tracking

When anchor tracking is enabled, the URL in the address bar is automatically updated with the active anchor as highlighted in the table of contents. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.tracking"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.tracking

When tabs are enabled, top-level sections are rendered in a menu layer below the header for viewports above 1220px, but remain as-is on mobile. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.tabs"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.tabs

Navigation tabs enabled Navigation tabs enabled dark

Navigation tabs disabled Navigation tabs disabled dark

When sticky tabs are enabled, navigation tabs will lock below the header and always remain visible when scrolling down. Just add the following two feature flags to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.tabs",
    "navigation.tabs.sticky"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.tabs
    - navigation.tabs.sticky

When sections are enabled, top-level sections are rendered as groups in the sidebar for viewports above 1220px, but remain as-is on mobile. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.sections"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.sections

Navigation sections enabled Navigation sections enabled dark

Navigation sections disabled Navigation sections disabled dark

Both feature flags, navigation.tabs and navigation.sections, can be combined with each other. If both feature flags are enabled, sections are rendered for level 2 navigation items.

When expansion is enabled, the left sidebar will expand all collapsible subsections by default, so the user doesn't have to open subsections manually. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.expand"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.expand

Navigation expansion enabled Navigation expansion enabled dark

Navigation expansion disabled Navigation expansion disabled dark

When navigation paths are activated, a breadcrumb navigation is rendered above the title of each page, which might make orientation easier for users visiting your documentation on devices with smaller screens. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.path"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.path

Navigation path enabled Navigation path enabled dark

Navigation path disabled Navigation path disabled dark

When pruning is enabled, only the visible navigation items are included in the rendered HTML, reducing the size of the built site by 33% or more. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.prune" # (1)!
]
  1. This feature flag is not compatible with navigation.expand, as navigation expansion requires the complete navigation structure.
theme:
  features:
    - navigation.prune # (1)!
  1. This feature flag is not compatible with navigation.expand, as navigation expansion requires the complete navigation structure.

This feature flag is especially useful for documentation sites with thousands of pages, as the navigation makes up a significant fraction of the HTML. Navigation pruning will replace all expandable sections with links to the first page in that section (or the section index page).

Section index pages

When section index pages are enabled, documents can be directly attached to sections, which is particularly useful for providing overview pages. Add the following lines to mkdocs.yml:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.indexes" # (1)!
]
  1. This feature flag is not compatible with toc.integrate, as sections cannot host the table of contents due to missing space.
theme:
  features:
    - navigation.indexes # (1)!
  1. This feature flag is not compatible with toc.integrate, as sections cannot host the table of contents due to missing space.

In order to link a page to a section, create a new document with the name index.md in the respective folder, and add it to the beginning of your navigation section:

[project]
nav = [
    {"Section" = [
        "section/index.md", # (1)!
        {"Page 1" = "section/page-1.md"},
        ...
        {"Page n" = "section/page-n.md"}

    ]}
]
  1. README.md is also considered an index page.
nav:
  - Section:
    - section/index.md # (1)!
    - Page 1: section/page-1.md
    ...
    - Page n: section/page-n.md
  1. README.md is also considered an index page.

Table of contents

Anchor following

When anchor following for the table of contents is enabled, the sidebar is automatically scrolled so that the active anchor is always visible. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "toc.follow"
]

theme:
  features:
    - toc.follow

When navigation integration for the table of contents is enabled, it is always rendered as part of the navigation sidebar on the left. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "toc.integrate" # (1)!
]
  1. This feature flag is not compatible with navigation.indexes, as sections cannot host the table of contents due to missing space.
theme:
  features:
    - toc.integrate # (1)!
  1. This feature flag is not compatible with navigation.indexes, as sections cannot host the table of contents due to missing space.

Navigation integration enabled Navigation integration enabled dark

Navigation integration disabled Navigation integration disabled dark

Back-to-top button

A back-to-top button can be shown when the user, after scrolling down, starts to scroll up again. It's rendered centered and just below the header. Add the following lines to your configuration:

[project.theme]
features = [
    "navigation.top"
]

theme:
  features:
    - navigation.top

Usage

Hide the sidebars

The navigation and/or table of contents sidebars can be hidden for a document with the front matter hide property. Add the following lines at the top of a Markdown file:

---
hide:
  - navigation
  - toc
---

# Page title
...

Hide the navigation path

While the navigation path is rendered above the main headline, sometimes, it might be desirable to hide it for a specific page, which can be achieved with the front matter hide property:

---
hide:
  - path
---

# Page title
...

Customization

Content area width

The width of the content area is set so the length of each line doesn't exceed 80-100 characters, depending on the width of the characters. While this is a reasonable default, as longer lines tend to be harder to read, it may be desirable to increase the overall width of the content area, or even make it stretch to the entire available space.

This can easily be achieved with an additional style sheet and a few lines of CSS:

.md-grid {
  max-width: 1440px; /* (1)! */
}

  1. If you want the content area to always stretch to the available screen space, reset max-width with the following CSS:

    .md-grid {
  max-width: initial;
}

[project]
extra_css = ["stylesheets/extra.css"]

extra_css:
  - stylesheets/extra.css