Second level top-menu not present when expected

See #19121 (closed) & #18844 (closed)

On the top menu, some options show a group of other options, which are shown in a second row, e.g. "Issues" has 3 sub-options "Issues", "Labels", "Milestones".

This second row is only present in the "Issues / Issues" listing, but disappears when I get into a specific issue (or create a new one, like I'm doing now). It makes it tedious to access the other sub-options.

I found this bothered me in Repository and Pipelines.

I'm creating this issue in order to know if somebody else is bothered by this and discuss alternatives. The ones I can think of:

1. Showing the second-level top-menu in every page. This includes show views, forms, etc. This would not apply to Project, Activity, and Snippets of course.
2. Good: easier to navigate
3. Bad: less space for content
4. Same as previous option, but making it an overlay (ie. absolutely positioned, hidden by default, shown on hover)
5. Good: easier to navigate, more space for content than today
6. Bad: hover is problematic for UX; does not work in mobile
7. Adding a breadcrumb after the project selector: this is implemented, partially (e.g. this commit does not show it, while this build does)
8. Good: seems to be current approach, least amount of changes needed
9. Bad: not all navigation issues are solved (e.g. listing commits requires 2 requests in most cases)

And I ran out of options... ideas?

Case: I just opened a link to a commit I was sent. And wanted to see all the commits... had to go to Repository / Files and then Repository / Commits.

Not a big deal, but a papercut.

Added ~19492 label

I just realized that Builds uses a sort of breadcrumb to help its navigation:

which is good enough for the case I just outlined, but not enough if I want to see Repository / Branch and I'm on a commit. I will add this to the issue.

Changed title: [UX] Second level top-menu not present when expected → Second level top-menu not present when expected

mentioned in issue #19495 (moved)

Duplicate of #19121 (closed) ?

Also see #18844 (closed) for ongoing discussion.

@tofi86 totally dupe, closing

Status changed to closed