Some thoughts about new sidebar feature

[1280px]

Overall, I like the sidebar design, but would like to share some ideas and notes:

1. Grouping by categories is unnecessary, and only clutters the sidebar. It can be changed to a simple horizontal line with margins of about the height of a menu item

2. Why replacing search field with a button? The width of sidebar allows for the whole field to fit,

3. Because of both logo and menu items using the same typeface, it kind of looks as if there were centered wrongly. What it we use different typeface of a font just to show that this is a logo, which is (kind of) not a regular menu item? I also centered it inside of the sidebar and added another (perhaps unnecessary?) separation, just to show it.

4. "Profile", "Settings" and "Log out" items are shown even if user is not logged in, leading to 404 when clicked. Seems to be a bug considering I actually managed to get the "Login" and "Registration" items to appear instead, though I don't remember how exactly.

Some quick concept art (don't mind the paddings being not 100% consistent). I also changed the page paddings for a little, just to page to work better when sidebar navigation is enabled). === BEFORE: ===

=== AFTER: ===

[vednoc]

Most of these points are temporary measures until my UI rewrite is complete, and it will include sidebar improvements.