Extending the Navigation Menu to Support Multiple Levels

Hey All...

In Common.css I see what appears to be support for multiple tabbar levels and I'm just wondering what this is. Under the tab styles section it lists two groups (.CommonTopGroup and .CommonLevel2Group) and within these there are further styles defined such as .CommonTopLevelTab, .CommonTopLevelTabHover, .CommonSelectedTopLevelTab, .CommonLevel2Tab, .CommonLevel2TabHover and .CommonSelectedLevel2Tab.

It appears self-evident to me that this indicates a built-in capability of CS2 to render a multiple (or rather double) menu hierarchy. Remember, this is the section in Common.css which deals with the rendering style of the navigation bar.

The most obvious way of implementing a double menu hierarchy would be through defining child navigation nodes in the siteurls.config XML file, but this has no effect.

Am I barking up the wrong tree? Is there even a tree at all?

If there is no tree, then is this feature being considered for 2.1 / 3.0? I've done some extensive searching in the forums but cannot find any info on this. It seems that this is a feature that people want. Should I whip out the SDK and amend the source to provide such a feature? I'm sure people will use it...

Paul.

I have changed the subject of this discussion to  better reflect the direction it is going.

Nope. the siteURLs does not include a tree.

Nor is there any standard navigation past the top-level tabs. The files section uses a tree control, but the forums and blogs do not. I'm not familiar with the gallery.

About the only other "standard" navigation is the breadcrumb control (used in the forums, but requires heavy modification/reproduction to use elsewhere) and the expanding-group list used in the control panel section (which I havn't attempted to hack yet).

aylwyn:

Should I whip out the SDK and amend the source to provide such a feature? I'm sure people will use it...

Yes, go for it! This would be a great contribution to the community?

aylwyn:

Should I whip out the SDK and amend the source to provide such a feature? I'm sure people will use it...

Yes, go for it! This would be a great contribution to the community?

madkidd:

Yes, go for it! This would be a great contribution to the community?

Does anyone know what plans there are for navigation in 2.1 / 3.0?

Also I think it would be better to extend the existing controls using inheritance etc. .NET is Object Orientanted isn't it? That way the integrity of the source is not compromised, and it will be easier to integrate and implement, both in this and possibly in future versions. Let's hope that the CS Develpopment Team hasn't set the objects to be uninheritable.

If anyone has any ideas etc I would love to hear them before I start working on this.

In terms of implementation I see the one of the following at this stage:

• Menus / Pages defined in SiteURLs.config as described above, e.g. :
  
  

  <navigation>
       <link name="home" resourceUrl="home" resourceName="home" roles="Everyone" >
            <link name="daily_news" resourceUrl="daily_news" resourceName="Daily News" roles="Everyone" />
       </link>
  </navigation>

• This would output multiple tables which could then be rendered using style sheets in the normal manner.
   

However, another maybe easier option than extending the existing software infrastructure would be to scrap the existing model altogether and use the standard AST.NET 2.0 navigation controls to do the job for us. We could use a .sitemap XML file as the configuration file for the navigation system. I could of course still make it provide support resource names (for localisation), and role membership, as well as a couple of other neat tweaks that I have come up with. ASP.NET 2.0 has already done a lot of the work for us and it supports templates / skins etc.

The more I think about it the more I am tempted to take the second approach. However this solution would not work for those sites running on ASP.NET 1.x. I also don't know what other issues we would encounter as I havn't yet looked into what other functions the siteURLS.config file does.

This second approach was not taken up by Telligent as of course ASP.NET 2.0 RTM did not exist untill recently (c. 6 months ago). I believe that Telligent are strategically alligning themselves with ASP.NET 2.0 (ASP.NET 3.0?) for CS 3.0. Considering that Telligent are likely (correct me if I'm wrong please) to go with ASP.NET 2.0 in the future and break with providing support for ASP.NET 1.x, maybe I / we should too.

So any thoughts, suggestions, feedback would be useful.

Paul.

madkidd:

aylwyn:

Should I whip out the SDK and amend the source to provide such a feature? I'm sure people will use it...

Yes, go for it! This would be a great contribution to the community?

You don't need the SDK to support multi-level navigation. CS includes the ComponentArt Web UI suite, which includes TreeView and PanelBar controls, which can be adapted for alternative navigation methods. I implemented such a system for Innovation Styles (although we had to use the Telerik equivalent in the end due to a bug that interfered with our specific requirements) - no source changes necessary.

Genyus:

You don't need the SDK to support multi-level navigation.

I completely agree. I made an off-the-cuff remark about wanting to extend the navigation system. I want to find a solution that slips in with, not interferes with, the existing infrastructure.

 

Genyus:

CS includes the ComponentArt Web UI suite, which includes TreeView and PanelBar controls, which can be adapted for alternative navigation methods...

My understanding was that CS was only licensed to use the TreeView and PanelBar components, but that was just an implicit (and incorrect) assumption that I made. The menu system of ComponentArt's Web UI Suite is far superior to that of Microsoft's standard 'Out-of-the-Box' navigation controls that ship with ASP.NET 2.0, so I guess using that would be the prefered option.

Thanks for the heads up Genyus!

I'll need to go away and do some more research though... I'm quite familiar with the ASP.NET 2.0 navigation controls, but am going to have to do some thorough investigations as to the capabilities and implementation of ComponetArt's Web UI Suite's Menu component.

In the meantime ->

Although I'm doing this for a site I'm currently working on, the main aim is produce something for the whole community to use. So come on guys, I encourage you all, give me your feed-back, suggestions etc. How do you see this thing working visually? Main tab at the top, sub bar on the left? As a double layer up top? As a drop down menu?

The more suggestions the better...

Paul.

I think I found a (somewhat) easy way to implement drop down menus.

It's a workaround and a manual effort, but no different then having to edit the siteurls.config to add menu items.

Add a Common content region in skin-TitleBar.aspx,

You can then create a menu using javascript or CSS in the now customizable region added to the title bar

Hide or delete the entry below from skin-TitleBar.aspx and you're done.

<div class="CommonTabBar">
 <%-- <CS:TabBar runat = "Server" /> --%>
 <CS:RepeaterBar runat="server" />
</div>

A couple of caveats:

1. You'll lose the user specific menu capability

2. You have to manually create the menu

I'm working on this now and will let you know how it goes.

 

Genyus, You're a genius!   This is exactly what I need for the site I'm working on.  Can you share how you incoporated the panelbar into your site design?

On my site I'll have 2 sections (i.e. tabs on the Nav Bar) Home which points to my blog and About which I'd like to point to 5-6 different pages (About Me,  About this Site, FAQ, etc).  A panel bar would be ideal for this.

 Thanks,
Ben

Personally I don't think CS needs to enhance their own library at all beyond making it easier for people to skin. If done well, we should never have to consider modding the default template. All that is needed is a good selection of controls that we can drop onto pages to construct a working site. I'm looking forward to the new skinning in CS3 to solve my more advanced navigation requirements.

I built a custom control that inherited the TabDrivenTemplatedWebControl. The Telerik implementation needed a little extra code due to operational differences to the CA version that we tried at first. But check the source for the base class I mentioned and the CA docs and it shouldn't be too much of a headache to get set up.