Navigation bar not responsive for small screens and smartphones tablets

[bmw]

I am using 4.5.3 on Joomla 3.3.6 (updating this weekend). Seems that CV nav bar is not responsive with default Joomla administration console template on small screens including tablets (depending on settings but mostly default). This is more a function of the Joomla administrator template than CiviCRM.

But in any case, it would be very nice to have a left column menu much like "Create New".

[Coleman Watts]

The civicrm navigation menu relies on an old, abandoned jQuery plugin and so far no new alternatives have emerged on the scene to give us something to replace it with. But I haven't researched it lately, maybe you can find one and supply a patch.
See https://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-14428

[bmw]

A worthy challenge and, yes, I accept. Others, please do the same.

UPDATE: Coleman, are you opposed to MooTools? I am not familiar with the codebase enough on this issue with different CMS platforms. I would also like to refrain from adding yet another library to download. Things can get bloated.

[bmw]

Something like this would work real well and degrades gracefully if JS was not available. It's customizable enough. If you can give me a little guidance as to providing a patch, I'll work on it. And, of course, will find a GPL version. The below is just an example.
http://demos.pixelworkshop.fr/?theme=MegaMenuCompleteSet

[Coleman Watts]

CiviCRM has embraced js (at least for the backend) and is moving toward even more js-heavy components. So I wouldn't worry about whether or not something on the backend (and the menu is only on the backend) degrades without js.

It would be nice to not add huge new libraries. We already have jQuery, jQuery UI, lo-dash and our own homespun CRM libraries loading on every page. And pretty soon you can count Angular in that mix too. There's also been talk and some GSOC work to add Bootstrap into CiviCRM core, so a menu plugin for any of those would be cool.

The example you linked to is very nice, possibly even overkill (not sure how heavy the code is, maybe it's lightweight enough to not be considered overkill).