Understanding how navbars and legacy navbar templates are migrated

Navbars created before Learning Environment 9.0 use a different layout than current navbars. The main difference between current navbars and former navbars is that former navbars were designed for a fixed size navigation area within a frame.

The new Navbars tool allows greater design flexibility. Navbar resizing is more fluid, accommodates different screen resolutions better and is more accessible to individuals navigating by keyboard and assistive technologies. We recommend that you take the time to recreate migrated navbars using the new Navbars tool.

Your navbars and legacy navbar templates are automatically migrated when you upgrade from a pre-Learning Environment 9.0 release to Learning Environment 9.0 or later. However, your ability to edit and share these items is restricted.

Legacy navbar templates

Legacy navbar templates are visible in Learning Environment 9.0 and later, but they cannot be edited using the new Navbars tool, copied or used as the template for new navbars.

Legacy navbar templates are migrated at the organization level and shared with all child org units. They are listed below other navbar templates on the Templates page. If you select a legacy template to edit it, you are taken to the legacy Edit Template page. You can only use the legacy Edit Template page for migrated legacy templates; you cannot create new templates based on the legacy tool.

We recommend that you recreate your legacy templates and update all of your migrated navbars if possible. This way you can reuse your templates in new navbars and your navbar design will not affect the usability of your course pages.

Be aware that we have never validated navbar templates that use custom HTML, JavaScript or CSS. It’s possible that invalid markup could cause a navbar to render incorrectly in some browsers. Before, this incorrect rendering was constrained to the top frame, and may have gone unnoticed; now, since the top frame is gone, it’s possible that the entire page may render incorrectly.

Migrated legacy navbars

All your existing navbars are migrated to the new Navbars tool. Your navbar template, name, description, links and title are maintained.

The following applies to migrated navbars:

• The navbar set as the active navbar for a course or My Home before upgrade is maintained as the active navbar for the course or My Home in the upgraded site.
• The navbar set as the Course Default at the organization level before upgrade is maintained as the course default in the upgraded site.
• The last modified date for migrated navbars and legacy navbar templates is set as the migration date (until you make any modifications).
• All system links in migrated navbars display Text Only. Custom links may display Text Only or Icon and Text depending on whether the migrated custom link included an image.
• Any custom links that were set as global are migrated as shared custom links and are shared from the org unit they were created in. Any org units that use the global custom link before migration but are not a child of the org unit sharing the custom link will still have access to the link after migration; however, if they remove the link from their navbar at any point they will no longer have access to it.

When you edit a migrated navbar you use the same Edit Navbar page as you use for new navbars.

When you copy a migrated navbar that uses a legacy template, your navbar links and title are copied, but the navbar copy uses the default navbar template rather than the legacy template associated with the migrated navbar. This happens because you cannot create new copies of legacy navbar templates.

Troubleshooting migrated navbars

The left and right link areas for migrated navbars use a fixed width based on the width of the left background and right background image. If you add more links to an area than the background image's width supports, your links will be truncated on the navbar (some links will not appear). You can fix your navbar in one of three ways:

• Move some links to another link area so all your links fit within the image width.
• Make your left or right background image wider so that it supports more links.
• Don't use left or right background images. Only use a global image that repeats as necessary.

Move some links to another link area

1. On the main Navbars page, click the name of the navbar you want to edit.
2. Select the Links tab.
3. Open the Actions context menu for the link.
4. Select Remove.
5. Click the Add Links button for the new navbar link area you want to use.
6. Select the appropriate tools (links), and click Add.

Make your background image wider

1. On the main Navbars page, select Templates from the top navigation area.
2. Select the template you want to edit.
3. Select the Style tab.
4. Click the Edit Legacy Template button.
5. Select Background.
6. Select either Left Background (controls the size of the left link areas) or Right Background (controls the size of the right link areas).
7. Browse for and Save your updated background image.

See also

• Understanding navbar templates
• Understanding navbars