Insert Menu
Overview
Inserting a menu adds a process that is able to load and show a menu in your site. Using menus in one form or another is the most common way to control navigation in web applications.
You can read more about menus in Websydian Express here.
Preparations
Before inserting the menu in the site structure, it will in most cases be necessary to create a new presentation for the generic menu loader process (process ID: WSMNUP). The reason for this is that each menu typically will have a different layout. The new presentation must specify a new template (using the template suffix).
You can read more about specifying a presentation for an existing process here.
Insert menu
The menu item "Site structure -> Site Structure" is used for accessing the site structure tree.
A menu can be used in three different contexts:
- The menu is displayed in a frame when a frameset is loaded
- The menu is displayed in a frame when a menu item is activated
- The menu is loaded in the entire browser page (not very common)
Please note, that inserting a menu does not give you any menu items for the menu - they must be assigned afterwards.
You can find more information about this in insert URL in menu, insert business process in menu, insert frameset in menu, and insert menu in menu.
Display menu in frame when frameset is loaded
- Select the frameset that should load the frame in the site structure tree.
- Press "Add". This starts a wizard that will lead you through the process.
- Select "Create new site element" and "Menu", press "Next".
- Select the presentation of the menu element to be used by pressing
"Select".
Use the search facility to find the presentation. - Supply information about the site element, and press "Next"
- Text - the name that you want to appear for the menu site element in the site structure.
- Frame - Name of the frame
- Comments - optional comments
- Assign the roles for the site element, and press "Finish"
Display menu in frame when menu item is activated
- Select the menu that must contain the menu item loading the URL.
- Press "Add". This starts a wizard that will lead you through the process.
- Select "Create new site element" and "Menu", press "Next".
- Select the presentation of the menu element to be used by pressing
"Select".
Use the search facility to find the presentation. - Supply information about the site element, and press "Next"
- Menu item text - this is the text that will be shown for the menu item in the menu. (It will also be shown in the site structure tree).
- Alignment- indicating whether you want to show the menu point in the first (left) or second (right) section of the menu.
- Sequence - this specifies the order that the menu items will be shown in. Be aware that by defining two or more menu items with the same combination of alignment and sequence will result in only one of them being shown in the menu. Which menu item to show is decided from the authorization level of the menu items in combination with the authorization level of the session.
- Display in frame - this specifies the frame you want to populate with the URL when the menu item is activated.
- Comments - optional comments.
- Assign the roles for the site element, and press "Finish"
Display menu in entire browser page
In this case the menu will be the only element loaded, when the site is started.
This might be used if you want to have a start menu as the first (and only) thing shown to a group of users.
- Select the site root element.
- Press "Add". This starts a wizard that will lead you through the process.
- Select "Create new site element" and "Menu", press "Next".
- Select the presentation of the menu element to be used by pressing
"Select".
Use the search facility to find the presentation. - Supply information about the site element, and press "Next"
- Text - the name that you want to appear for the menu site element in the site structure.
- Comments - optional comments.
- Assign the roles for the site element, and press "Finish"
Create a sub menu
This section describes the necessary steps you need to take to add a menu item that loads a submenu to an existing menu.
This is done in two steps - first you define that the menu item, when activated, must load a frameset, which splits a frame into two - one part, which must contain the menu - and another part, which will be populated by the menu items in the new menu.
This is in fact just a combination of the steps needed to create a frameset and letting a menu populate a frame when it is loaded by the frame set.
But as it is a quite common task the necessary steps are described in this section as one process.
Add frameset
- Select the menu that should contain the new menu item.
- Press "Add". This starts a wizard that will lead you through the process.
- Select "Create new site element" and "Frameset", press "Next".
- Select the presentation of the frameset element to be used by pressing
"Select".
Use the search facility to find the presentation. - Supply information about the site element, and press "Next".
- Menu item text - this is the text that will be shown for the menu item in the menu. (It will also be shown in the site structure tree).
- Alignment - indicating whether you want to show the menu item in the first (left) or second (right) section of the menu.
- Sequence - this specifies the order that the menu items will be shown in. Be aware that by defining two or more menu items with the same combination of alignment and sequence will result in only one of them being shown in the menu. Which menu item to show is decided from the roles assigned to the menu items in combination with the roles assigned to the current session.
- Display in frame - this specifies the frame you want to split using the frameset when the menu item is activated.
- Comments - optional field for your comments
- Assign the roles for the site element, and press "Finish".
Define frames in frameset template
Open the HTML template for the presentation used in the previous step
Use the /(NAME-...) replacement marker to specify the names of the frames, you wish the frameset to load.
You will also define the physical properties of the frames in the frameset template.
For each of these frames you need to define the content in the site structure. Either as a new frameset, as a business process or as a menu.
In the situation, where you want a submenu, you will most likely want to define two frames in the frameset template - one for the submenu - and one for showing the output of the menu items of the submenu.
Define content of menu frame
The submenu is to be loaded into the frame as the frame is loaded by the frameset.
- Select newly created frameset in the site structure tree.
- Press "Add". This starts a wizard that will lead you through the process.
- Select "Create new site element" and "Menu", press "Next".
- Select the presentation of the menu element to be used by pressing
"Select".
Use the search facility to find the presentation. - Supply information about the site element, and press "Next"
- Text - the name that you want to appear for the menu site element in the site structure.
- Frame - Name of the frame
- Comments - optional comments
- Assign the roles for the site element, and press "Finish"
Define menu items for menu
A menu in itself does not really give you any content for the menu frame.
Read more about how you define different types of elements as menu items here:
Insert URL in menu, Insert business process in menu, Insert frameset in menu, and Insert menu in menu.
Define content of the other frame
Apart from defining a place to put the menu - the frameset will also provide at least one other frame (the rest of the frame, which was split).
Unless you wish this frame to be empty until a menu item has been selected you must also specify what you want to use for populating the frame.
In many cases you will want to use one of the menu items used in the sub menu for populating the frame.
You can find information about how to populate the frame (as it is loaded) in the following sections:
Populate with business process, populate with URL, populate (split) with frameset, populate with menu.