- Purpose and function -
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- The shell is perhaps the most crucial piece of any UI built with Carbon. It contains the shared navigation framework
- for the entire design system and ties the products in IBM’s portfolio together in a cohesive and elegant way. The
- shell is the home of the topmost navigation, where users can quickly and dependably gain their bearings and move
- between pages.
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- The shell was designed with maximum flexibility built in, to serve the needs of a broad range of products and users.
- Adopting the shell ensures compliance with IBM design standards, simplifies development efforts, and provides great
- user experiences. All IBM products built with Carbon are required to use the shell’s header.
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- To better understand the purpose and function of the UI shell, consider the “shell” of MacOS, which contains the Apple
- menu, top-level navigation, and universal, OS-level controls at the top of the screen, as well as a universal dock
- along the bottom or side of the screen. The Carbon UI shell is roughly analogous in function to these parts of the Mac
- UI. For example, the app switcher portion of the shell can be compared to the dock in MacOS.
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- Header responsive behavior -
-- As a header scales down to fit smaller screen sizes, headers with persistent side nav menus should have the side nav - collapse into “hamburger” menu. See the example to better understand responsive behavior of the header. -
-- Secondary navigation -
-- The side-nav contains secondary navigation and fits below the header. It can be configured to be either fixed-width or - flexible, with only one level of nested items allowed. Both links and category lists can be used in the side-nav and - may be mixed together. There are several configurations of the side-nav, but only one configuration should be used per - product section. If tabs are needed on a page when using a side-nav, then the tabs are secondary in hierarchy to the - side-nav. -
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