Inserting a navigation menu
A navigation menu is a set of links to other Web pages, displayed as a horizontal or vertical bar, in a Web site. Navigation menus, also known as rollover menus, expand when you move your mouse over the menu.
- Create a Web project.
- Create a Web site structure.
- Create
or import Web resources.
- Create a Web page template (optional).
Note: If you use a page template to govern the layout and visual design of all of the pages in a Web site, you can insert a navigation bar onto the page template, rather than adding the navigation to every page individually. The links in the navigation bar are then updated dynamically for each individual page in the site.
By default, all Web pages are shown in the navigation and appear in the navigation bar; however, typically, not all pages in a site are listed in the navigation menu. Usually the navigation bar contains links to other, closely related pages in a site. For example, the navigation menu usually contains a link to the home page, or the site's main page, because that page functions as the site's focal point. In Web Site Navigation, this page is referred to as the top page.
You can specify which pages link from the navigation menu. You can set link preferences so that each page's navigation bar is dynamically created to reflect those preferences. For instance, if you select that all child pages are to be included in a navigation bar, then the navigation bar for each page dynamically links to only that particular page's child pages.
You can insert a navigation menu into a Web page by inserting a navigation object from the Palette view. The following table shows you the difference between the different navigation menu options of the Web Site Navigation:
| Navigation type | Navigation icon |
|---|---|
| Horizontal Menu | 
|
| Vertical Menu | 
|
| Tabbed Menu | 
|
To insert a navigation menu into a Web page, do the following:
- To open Web Site
Navigation, expand your Web project in the Project
Explorer view and double-click
Web Site Navigation.
- Double-click a page icon in Web Site Navigation
to open the Design
page in Page Designer.
- Select the Web Site
Navigation drawer in the Palette view. You
have the following navigation menu options:
- Horizontal
Menu
- Vertical Menu
- Tabbed Menu
- Horizontal
Menu
- Choose the style of navigation you want to insert and drag
and
drop the palette object onto the page. Depending on which navigation
bar you
choose, one of several insert windows opens.
- Select
whether you want to use a
Sample or a
User-defined navigation bar. If you want to use a sample navigation bar, select one of the
Thumbnail images and the
File name field is populated. If you have a user-defined navigation bar, you can click Browse to locate the file in the
Current project or
Import the file from the file system. Select your user-defined navigation bar and the
File name field is populated. Click Next.
- Select the type of links that you want to appear
in the navigation
bar. You can select links based on page relationships. For example,
you can
select links based on parent-child relationships or you can select
links based
on sequence (previous and next pages). If you select previous or next
links,
you can supply a label to appear for those links, such as Back and
Forward.
- If the Web page or page template to
which you are adding the navigation
is a JSP or Faces JSP page, click Next. On the Optional Settings
for
Specification File page of the wizard, select the navigation type
that you
want to use.
- Click
Finish.
A navigation icon is inserted
on the page or template to indicate that a navigation component exists.
- Press CTRL+S to save your changes. The navigation menu is inserted on the page. Note that you cannot change the type of navigation menu after it is added to the page.
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