We would like to know which one you (“sidebar” or “header dropdown”) you prefer
As far as I can see, the contents of both are customizable to a degree, so it’s more about the placement/style, less about the exact options shown therein.
In practice I rarely use it so the drop down menu is more hidden, which I prefer for items I rarely use. I could probably get used to the side menu, but for now I voted to stick to the current menu.
Oh the sidebar is also hide-able, if you want to: press the “burger” menu button above it, and it will slide away.
I do use the current menu quite regularly, but only to jump to the “review” and “admin” areas, so I voted “header dropdown” too, as it feels more natural to use a “context” menu for those actions.
I think if one uses the menu to jump between categories, the sidebar is more useful?
Not voting since I don’t have any opinion on this (never really used the menu in the first place), but I assume the sidebar menu would be more useful for people who actually use the menu in general navigation of the site.
While the sidebar might provide a more obvious way of navigating, it just feels busy and unnatural for a forum platform (though Discourse is fairly different from the rest). Being able to hide it is good, and is reminiscent of the way Foreman and other PatternFly UI projects have collapsible navigation. I agree that the header dropdown provides a more context-menu like appearance and feels more intuitive to me.
That being said, as long as they hold the same information (e.g. the header variant exposes all the items the sidebar would), it doesn’t really seem to matter. I’d vote header dropdown, though sometimes change can be nice!
I also do not feel a need for the menu, so header dropdown.
But as discourse is only using have of my screen with a blank left and right, I do not mind if a menu will fill some blank space.
