Work with portal navigation
The theme that is shipped with WebSphere Portal provides buttons (for example, Main Menu) and other navigational aids to let you access various screens (for example, Login and Administration). The theme also provides navigation to nodes in the portal hierarchy of the home page, breadcrumb trails, and Quick Links.
Quick Links can be used to access major areas of a portal site. Quick Links are also accessible from any location within the site, and we can customize them for the portal. Quick Links are displayed at the bottom of the site and can be customized as well as provide one-click access to major areas of the site.
Depending on a page's theme policy, some items will or will not be displayed. Theme policy will also control if page links will be located on the top of the page, and/or on the side of a page
The nodes in this hierarchy can be described by the number of levels below the content root in which they are placed. After installation, the portal theme along with the theme policy control how these nodes are displayed. The following JSPF files handle navigation within the portal:
banner_crumbtrail.jsp Provides a way to move back to previous selected nodes. Uses the selection model API. The rendering of the breadcrumb trail is controlled by the theme policy value renderBreadCrumb. The number of trails listed is controlled by the theme policy value breadCrumbMaxLevels.
footer.jsp Controls the quick links. Initial OOB links are provided. The rendering of quick links is controlled by the theme policy value renderFavorites.
mainmenu.jsp Handles the main menu. The rendering of the main menu is controlled by the theme policy value renderMainMenu. The nodes listed are based on the theme policy values rootNavigationStartLevel and rootNavigationStopLevel.
sideNav.jsp Displays page links at the side of the site. The nodes displayed are controlled by the theme policy value topNavigationStartLevel and topNavigationStopLevel.
topNav.jsp Displays page links at the top of the site. The nodes displayed are controlled by the theme policy value topNavigationStartLevel and topNavigationStopLevel.
Navigation levels are designated by the startLevel and stopLevel attributes of the tag...
<portal-navigation:navigation/>The JSPFs that are provided by WebSphere Portal do not provide access to all level 1 nodes. Therefore, nodes that are created directly under content root cannot be accessed unless a direct link is created using the tag...
<portal-navigation: URLGeneration/>The following topics provide further details and sample code for providing portal navigation.
- Implementing a single level of navigation
- Implementing side navigation
- Creating custom links to portlets and pages
The <portal-navigation:navigation/> tag is used to create the navigation menu. The content of this tag includes internal Java scriptlets that should not be modified. We can, however, customize the navigation by changing images, HTML and JSP tags, and the classes in themeStyles.jsp.
Related information
- Portal style classes
- Tags used by the portal JSPs
- Customizing the portal
- Creating your own theme
- Creating a new skin
- Performance guidelines for themes and skins
- Supporting new clients
- Supporting new markup languages
- Portal style classes
- Change text information
- Change the portal page help
- Using JSTL tags in the portal JSPs
- Manage portal resources with policies