Navigation Nightmare: How We Solved Desktop Clutter and Mobile Responsiveness

A great navigation bar is like a good joke: if you have to explain it, it’s not that good. In the early versions of Murugo, our navigation was no laughing matter. It was cluttered, unresponsive, and a constant source of user frustration. This is the story of how we tamed the navigation nightmare.

The Problem: A Tale of Two Navbars

The core of the issue was the difference in navigation items for logged-in users versus guests. Guests saw a simple, clean navigation bar. But once a user logged in, new items like “My Properties,” “Messages,” and “Profile” appeared, causing a cascade of UI problems:

Desktop Clutter: On desktop screens, the new items would push the search bar to the side, squashing it into an unusable sliver.
Stacked Text: Long phrases like “My Properties” would wrap onto a new line, creating a messy, stacked appearance.
Mobile Mayhem: On mobile devices, the navigation was even worse, with items overlapping and breaking out of their containers.

The Investigation: A Deep Dive into Responsive Design

I knew that a simple CSS fix wouldn’t be enough. I needed a holistic solution that would work across all screen sizes and user states. My goals were to:

Declutter the desktop view without sacrificing functionality.
Create a seamless mobile experience that was easy to navigate.
Maintain a consistent look and feel for all user roles (guest, renter, landlord, admin).

The Solution: A Combination of UI/UX Patterns

After much experimentation, I landed on a multi-part solution that addressed all of the key issues:

1. Icon-Only Navigation with Tooltips (Desktop):

For logged-in users on desktop, I replaced the long text links with a set of clean, intuitive icons. To ensure that the icons were still understandable, I added tooltips that would appear on hover, revealing the name of the navigation item.

  
<!-- Example: My Properties Link -->
<a href="" class="relative group">
    <svg class="w-6 h-6" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" viewBox="0 0 24 24">...</svg>
    <span class="absolute top-full mt-2 px-2 py-1 bg-gray-800 text-white text-xs rounded opacity-0 group-hover:opacity-100 transition-opacity">
        My Properties
    </span>
</a>

This simple change immediately decluttered the navigation bar and gave the search bar the space it needed.

2. Expandable Search Bar:

To further save space, I made the search bar expandable. By default, it would appear as a simple search icon. When clicked, it would expand into a full-width search input.

3. Mobile-First Off-Canvas Menu:

For mobile devices, I implemented a standard off-canvas menu (also known as a “hamburger” menu). This allowed me to hide all of the navigation items behind a single button, creating a clean and uncluttered mobile interface.

Lessons Learned

This navigation overhaul taught me a critical lesson: responsive design is not just about making things fit on a smaller screen; it’s about creating the best possible user experience for each context. By using a combination of established UI patterns, I was able to create a navigation system that was clean, intuitive, and worked beautifully across all devices.

In the next post, we’ll shift our focus from the frontend to the backend and talk about a critical, but often overlooked, aspect of application development: session security.

Navigation Nightmare: How We Solved Desktop Clutter and Mobile Responsiveness