Plugins

Last Updated: 2023-10-29 02:00:08

The navigation plugin provides an interface for creating menus structure in administrative portal and website. It's a convenient way to manage navigation for those who don't want use the any of the template editing tools.

Note: This plugin is partially deprecated. The plugin will retain it's administrative portal capabilities, however, website navigation is being phased out in favor of the designer plugin.

To understand the navigation system and how it works we have to look at three parts that includes stripes, menus and menu items.

Stripes are like containers and control placement and whether the navigation bar contents are stacked vertically or horizontally. Placement refers to the header, side, and footer positions on a page. You can create alternative stripes besides the defaults provided, however, default navigation stripes are considered system stripes and cannot be deleted or have their reference name changed but their contents can be modified. This is because plugin installation process may add menus to the default stripes.

Note: Navigation menus use the resource Maple syntax simpler in includes.

Menus are the most complex and have several options available. The options are broken down into three categories including alignment, type and mode.

Alignment

Menus within a navigation stripe are comparable to lists when regarding alignment. The options for menu alignment are left, middle or right, however, alignment will always be the outer most position. For example, when left aligning menu A followed by B, the final result is B and A.

Types

A menu type can be either a link, list or a template file. The link option is a straight forward clickable link to a URL with no sub items. A list is the same as a link but with sub items containing regular links.

The template option is the most interesting and can be used to create large navigation panels and constructs. It allows for a template to be loaded as the menu. For example, if you design content using one of the template editors, that template file can be used as a menu.

Modes

Modes allow you to customize the behavior of menu, however, it only applies to lists and templates. This option will be ignored for links. The modes include inline, popup and dialog with dialog having a modal option.

The inline mode forces a menu and it's menu items to be statically laid out with no interactive behavior ( mouse movement ). For example, menu items will be rendered vertically in their entirety.

The popup mode is the opposite, it hides menu items until there is interaction with the menu through mouse movement. This is the option you want to create drop-down menus.

The dialog option opens a dialog box with the menus' menu items or template as it's contents. This is a good option if your template is large, fancy and possibly needs scroll bars. There are additional options specific to dialog mode called modal and modal interactive. The difference between these two is interactive modal will place contents within a iframe window where the other does not.

Menu Items

A menu can have menu items which are additional links in the form of a list. Usually intended for creating inline menus or drop down menus.

Note: Menus and menu items can also have images or icons prefixed to them.

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