Topic: Kind of "admin populated menu block"

[ianus]

Greetings!

Why?
Imho a portal software should offer an (notable) entry point for a bulletinboard based website. On the other hand every Portal (for SMF) comes with the opportunity to offer a wider usability for visitors (the blocks).

Now most blocks offer (only) some kind of commercial. Links to "recent post" to offer an quick way into the board, board stats to make a statement on how active the board is, ... .

But if a webpage is based on a bulletinboard (and not on an CMS), there will be crucial links. An CMS need such links (to articles) badly, an bulletinboard don't - but it could be really nice if it offer some.

So, I think that extra contend in blocks are nice, but a menu which leads to the contend (and is easy to administrate), could me more usefull.

What?
I know that there are some (growing) menu solutions -
[WIP] Custom Menu Mod(SMF)
SP Navigation Block.(SP)

The first solution is really nice, but is bound to the original navigationbar. Well, and it is an early beta and maybe will missing some support in the future (Re: [WIP] Custom Menu Mod)
The second one is also usefull, but is bound to categories. This could be enough but not when it comes to single threads.

A possible solution (and the request).
A lot of menu scripts are using a simple list.
I personally use this for the top-navigation (All Levels Navigational Menu (v2.2)) and a variation of this for the side-menu (Smooth Navigational Menu (v1.31))
(This is an example of the final result - http://www.firopolis.de/forum2/index.php/board,40.0.html

There are some which are kind of "more up to date".
http://greengeckodesign.com/?q=menumatic
http://uvumitools.com/dropdown.html

Well, as mentioned there are a lot and all of them base on lists.

The trick (and the missing feature) is to populate this list and this is where the request started.
The best solution I have found is this one..
http://pilon.nl/mootools/2008/12/19/saving-a-sortable-nested-list-mootools-12/ (description & source)
http://pilon.nl/mootools/demos/saving-a-sortable-nested-list/tree3.html (Demo)
It is missing some features, like add a link like <a href=... and it's not possible to delete entries.
Also this will create a tree and not a drop-down.
Well, at least this is an example of what I' talking about.

Another one is located here: http://demos.mootools.net/Dynamic.Sortables
This will also offer the possibility to add a list item.

So, the question is, if it is possible to offer kind of "admin populated menu block"?