ux.nav overflow chunking

ux.nav-overflow-chunking

Rule ID: ux.nav-overflow-chunking Severity: WARN Category: ux Target Standards: Miller's Law (Information Processing Capacity: 7 ± 2 Chunks), Information Architecture Chunking & Category Hierarchy (Rosenfeld & Morville), W3C WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices Guide 1.2 (Navigation Menubars)

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1. Overview & Core Invariant

Warns when a navigation landmark contains more than 7 direct navigation links without chunking mechanisms

Core Invariant:

"Navigation landmarks ('

' or 'role="navigation"') must not present more than 7 flat direct links without grouping into disclosures, dropdown menus, or category drawers."

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2. Technical Grounding & Engine Realities

Miller's Law dictates that human working memory can reliably retain only 7 ± 2 distinct chunks of information at any single time.

When a main navigation bar presents 8 or more flat links in a single row or list without visual or hierarchical chunking, users experience choice paralysis and elevated cognitive scan latency.

To maintain optimal information architecture, high-density menus should group secondary destinations into nested dropdowns, accordions, or an overflow 'More...' disclosure container.

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3. Vulnerability & Risk Taxonomy

Risk Vector	Severity	Impact
Cognitive Overload & Choice Paralysis	MEDIUM	Users take significantly longer to locate key navigation targets and frequently miss secondary features.
Visual Clutter on Narrow Viewports	MEDIUM	Flat multi-link navigation rows wrap awkwardly or cause accidental taps on mobile touchscreens.

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4. Non-Compliant Code Patterns (Bad Examples)

TSX (Ten flat navigation links inside without grouping or overflow chunking):

<nav className="flex gap-4">
  <a href="/home">Beranda</a>
  <a href="/profil">Profil</a>
  <a href="/layanan">Layanan</a>
  <a href="/berita">Berita</a>
  <a href="/transparansi">Transparansi</a>
  <a href="/anggaran">Anggaran</a>
  <a href="/regulasi">Regulasi</a>
  <a href="/galeri">Galeri</a>
  <a href="/kontak">Kontak</a>
  <a href="/bantuan">Bantuan</a>
</nav>

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5. Compliant Implementation Patterns (Good Examples)

TSX (Primary destinations kept to 4 links, with remaining links grouped into a DropdownMenu):

<nav className="flex gap-4 items-center">
  <a href="/home">Beranda</a>
  <a href="/profil">Profil</a>
  <a href="/layanan">Layanan</a>
  <a href="/berita">Berita</a>
  <DropdownMenu>
    <button type="button" aria-expanded="false">Lainnya</button>
  </DropdownMenu>
</nav>

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6. Detection & Verification Pipeline (How The Rule Evaluates Code)

This rule evaluates source code through the standard AST inspection pipeline:

flowchart TD
    Node["AST Node (Astro / TSX element)"] --> Inspect["1. Inspect Element & Attributes"]
    Inspect --> Invariant{"2. Evaluate Rule Invariant"}
    Invariant -- "Compliant" --> Safe["Pass"]
    Invariant -- "Non-Compliant" --> IgnoreCheck{"3. Check charites:ignore directive"}
    IgnoreCheck -- "Ignored" --> Safe
    IgnoreCheck -- "Not Ignored" --> Diag["4. Emit Diagnostic: ux.nav-overflow-chunking"]

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Step-by-Step Evaluation:

1. AST Traversal: Visits normalized ir.Node structures during AST streaming.
2. Invariant Check: Compares node attributes against rule invariants.
3. Directive Suppression Check: Honors inline charites:ignore ux.nav-overflow-chunking directives.
4. Diagnostic Emission: Emits compiler-grade diagnostic on invariant violation.

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7. Verification & Test Harness (How The Test Works: 1-SSOT Tri-Corpus)

This rule is rigorously tested and validated across the canonical 1-SSOT Tri-Corpus in tests/correctness/ux.nav-overflow-chunking/:

flowchart TD
    subgraph GoldenCorpus ["1-SSOT Tri-Corpus Test Matrix for ux.nav-overflow-chunking"]
        subgraph P ["Positive Corpus (tests/correctness/ux.nav-overflow-chunking/positive/)"]
            P1["P1: Obvious Direct Violation"]
            P2["P2: Indirect / Variant Concatenation"]
            P3["P3: Helper / clsx / cn Wrapper"]
            P4["P4: Deeply Nested Elements"]
            P5["P5: Aliased Imports / Re-exports"]
        end
        subgraph N ["Negative Corpus (tests/correctness/ux.nav-overflow-chunking/negative/)"]
            N1["N1: Valid Design Tokens"]
            N2["N2: Explicit charites:ignore Directive"]
            N3["N3: Third-Party / Vendor Components"]
            N4["N4: Clean Semantic HTML"]
            N5["N5: Untokenized Custom Values (Banana Test)"]
        end
        subgraph A ["Adversarial Corpus (tests/correctness/ux.nav-overflow-chunking/adversarial/)"]
            A1["A1: Template Literal Interpolations"]
            A2["A2: Ternary Conditional Expressions"]
            A3["A3: Spread Properties & Dynamic Overrides"]
            A4["A4: Dynamic Object Class Syntax"]
            A5["A5: Shadowed Variable Identifiers"]
            A6["A6: Nested Closures & HOC Wrappers"]
            A7["A7: Obfuscated Classes & Cyclic Tokens"]
        end
    end

    P --> TestRunner["Automated Runner (rule_test.go)"]
    N --> TestRunner
    A --> TestRunner
    TestRunner --> Gates["Quality Gates: Zero Panic, Zero False-Positive, Zero Bypass"]

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• Positive Fixtures (P1-P5): Verified to trigger diagnostics at exact lines and column spans.
• Negative Fixtures (N1-N5): Verified to produce zero diagnostics on valid tokens and legitimate exemptions.
• Adversarial Fixtures (A1-A7): Verified to prevent evasion across dynamic expressions, string interpolations, and cyclic references.

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8. How to Suppress (Ignore Directives)

If this pattern is required for an intentional exception, suppress the diagnostic using the canonical Charites Rule ID:

<!-- charites:ignore ux.nav-overflow-chunking intentional exception -->

// charites:ignore ux.nav-overflow-chunking intentional exception

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9. Configuration Reference (charites.yaml)

rules:
  ux.nav-overflow-chunking:
    severity: warn # error | warn | info | off