refactor: Rebuild header components #1317

rschristian · 2025-07-31T12:28:29Z

Forewarning, sorry, this is fairly big.

Refactors most of the header to make everything a bit more fit for purpose but there are no real functional changes. It corrects a few (IMO) minor grievances that have popped up whilst making other edits:

Our usage / needs have drifted over the years compared to when most of components were built. Plenty of this is my doing, but for example:
- Whilst we had a <NavMenu> for the "About" routes, we later added a language drop down. This overlapped somewhat with the drop-down menu, but not completely, so there's this awkward ternary in the component.
- We needed to list /branding in config.nav so that it was detected as a valid route (404 detection and whatnot), but that list makes up the header items, so we had to add a magic prop
- The "About" menu is sorta a link, sorta not, so we add an additional conditional to give it special handling too. As such, sometimes <NavLink> returns an actual link, sometimes it's just a button that triggers no navigation whatsoever. A bit weird.
- We have a pathMatchesRoute function to apply the "selected" header style, but then have added additional conditionals outside of that because the function doesn't actually cover the cases we need.
- TLDR: We've quickly appended stuff over the years. Happens in every project, but this should hopefully be a bit better for us & easier to adjust in the future when needed.
Starts to break up config.json's responsibilities
- Our config.json is a bit of a weird god-file, in that it controls templating (config.nav -> header links), route definitions (used in /lib/route-utils.js for 404 detection & prerendering), and internationalization, all at once.
- As such, if you wanted to add a class name to the "Home" link in the header, you're doing it via JSON properties, not the JSX. Until you need to use variables/components, that is, then you're left matching routes.
Language picker is inaccessible
- My bad, the picker items are spans missing tabindexes, not that tabindexes there would be preferable over the alternatives anyhow. Can't select language via tabbing through the doc.
- Swapped the spans for buttons, easy fix at least. Dunno what I was thinking there.

The responsibilities of config.json is still a problem that still needs work, but this has at least gotten the templating out for the most part -- no where else are we really passing props via JSON. Ideally, I'll get routes split out from the internationalization in a sane way and then write a plugin to split the i18n file per language, should be about ~5kb of savings there. You'll only need 1 locale at a time of course.

This ships a tiny bit less JS, but nothing stellar. ~1kb less.

rschristian · 2025-07-31T12:30:47Z

src/components/header/style.module.css

-		button,
-		span {
+		button {


The span styles only existed for the (now altered) LanguagePicker

rschristian · 2025-07-31T12:31:19Z

src/components/header/style.module.css

-	&[open] {
+	&[data-open='true'] {


For TS, and we use data-open for every other menu too. Previously the hamburger menu used just open on the container div.

rschristian · 2025-07-31T12:31:53Z

src/lib/cx.js

-	return out;
+	return out || null;


Just to avoid empty class attributes sitting around in prerendered HTML, more than anything.

rschristian · 2025-07-31T12:33:47Z

content/en/guide/v8/getting-started.md

-> :information*desk_person: You [don't \_have* to use ES2015 to use Preact](https://github.com/developit/preact-without-babel)... but you should. This guide assumes you have some sort of ES2015 build set up using babel and/or webpack/browserify/gulp/grunt/etc. If you don't, start with [preact-cli](https://github.com/preactjs/preact-cli) or a [CodePen Template](http://codepen.io/developit/pen/pgaROe?editors=0010).
+> :information_desk_person: You [don't _have_ to use ES2015 to use Preact](https://github.com/developit/preact-without-babel)... but you should. This guide assumes you have some sort of ES2015 build set up using babel and/or webpack/browserify/gulp/grunt/etc.  If you don't, start with [preact-cli](https://github.com/preactjs/preact-cli) or a [CodePen Template](http://codepen.io/developit/pen/pgaROe?editors=0010).


Sorry, unrelated but correcting a Prettier bug that screwed up the content.

Didn't want to bother w/ a separate PR for something so tiny.

rschristian · 2025-07-31T12:35:13Z

src/components/header/index.jsx

-					<Nav class={style.nav} routes={config.nav} current={url} />
+					<MainNav />
 					<Search />
-					<div class={style.social}>
-						<ReleaseLink class={cx(style.socialItem, style.release)} />
-						<SocialIcon
-							label="Browse the code on GitHub"
-							href="https://github.com/preactjs/preact"
-							viewbox="0 0 24 24"
-							id="github"
-						/>
-						<SocialIcon
-							label="Follow us on Twitter"
-							href="https://twitter.com/preactjs"
-							viewbox="0 0 34 27.646"
-							id="twitter"
-						/>
-						<SocialIcon
-							label="Follow us on Bluesky"
-							href="https://bsky.app/profile/preactjs.com"
-							viewbox="0 0 568 501"
-							id="bluesky"
-						/>
-						<SocialIcon
-							label="Chat with us on Slack"
-							href="http://chat.preactjs.com/"
-							viewbox="0 0 512 512"
-							id="slack"
-						/>
-					</div>
-					<div class={style.translation}>
-						<NavMenu language />
-					</div>
+					<SocialLinks />
+					<LanguagePicker />


Broke this up as it was getting a bit big, though there's no complexity so equally I could merge everything back together too. Felt it looked marginally cleaner this way?

rschristian · 2025-08-01T09:56:16Z

src/lib/i18n.jsx

+
+/**
+ * Get the translated name of a path based upon the current language.
+ * @param {string} path
+ */
+export function useNavTranslation(path) {
+	const [lang] = useLanguage();
+
+	for (const route in config.nav) {
+		if (config.nav[route].path === path) {
+			return getRouteName(config.nav[route], lang);
+		} else if (config.nav[route].routes) {
+			for (const subRoute of config.nav[route].routes) {
+				if (subRoute.path === path) {
+					return getRouteName(subRoute, lang);
+				}
+			}
+		}
+	}
+
+	return null;
+}
+
+/**
+ * @param {{ name: Record<string, string> | string }} route
+ * @param {string} lang
+ * @return {string}
+ */
+export function getRouteName(route, lang) {
+	return typeof route.name === 'object'
+		? route.name[lang] || route.name.en
+		: route.name;
+}


More of a hold over mechanism, I hope to switch the nav translations into a keyed object & break them away from the route paths in the future.

rschristian added 5 commits July 31, 2025 07:19

refactor: Header

3e6b22f

fix: Prettier-mangled content

28a029c

revert: NavMenu component name

6471ee2

rever: Unrelated formatting changes

4f7edf1

revert: Remove 'branding' name

cab5a6a

rschristian commented Jul 31, 2025

View reviewed changes

rschristian commented Aug 1, 2025

View reviewed changes

refactor: Pass in header flair

c3a7721

rschristian force-pushed the refactor/header branch from 62c3d90 to 0f7da0c Compare August 1, 2025 10:07

refactor: Rework current path detection a bit

ce0c7fb

rschristian marked this pull request as ready for review August 4, 2025 04:48

JoviDeCroock approved these changes Aug 17, 2025

View reviewed changes

rschristian force-pushed the refactor/header branch from f98167a to ce0c7fb Compare August 24, 2025 20:19

rschristian merged commit 353cc2a into master Aug 24, 2025
5 checks passed

rschristian deleted the refactor/header branch August 24, 2025 20:31

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rschristian commented Jul 31, 2025 •

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		> :informationdesk_person: You [don't \_have to use ES2015 to use Preact](https://github.com/developit/preact-without-babel)... but you should. This guide assumes you have some sort of ES2015 build set up using babel and/or webpack/browserify/gulp/grunt/etc. If you don't, start with [preact-cli](https://github.com/preactjs/preact-cli) or a [CodePen Template](http://codepen.io/developit/pen/pgaROe?editors=0010).
		> :information_desk_person: You [don't _have_ to use ES2015 to use Preact](https://github.com/developit/preact-without-babel)... but you should. This guide assumes you have some sort of ES2015 build set up using babel and/or webpack/browserify/gulp/grunt/etc. If you don't, start with [preact-cli](https://github.com/preactjs/preact-cli) or a [CodePen Template](http://codepen.io/developit/pen/pgaROe?editors=0010).

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