|
Glossary Item Box
|
|
The Navigator Control is a template driven ASP.NET server control for StoreFront 6 that displays an expanding catalog menu. When you select a category, the StoreFront search results are displayed and the sub-categories are added to the menu. For example,
 |
After Selecting Books >>> |
 |
After Selecting History >>> |
 |
The Navigator Control has two modes. In Tree mode shown above, all the unselected items remain on the menu. Tree mode is appropriate when the Navigator Control is used to render for your entire menu. However, this can produce a long and cluttered appearance if you have dozens of sub-categories and many levels. In this case, you can configure the Navigator Control to only display the current category and current sub-categories. This is called Branch mode. For example,
|
After Selecting Books >>> |
 |
After Selecting History >>> |
 |
You can add multiple Navigator Controls to your site, each with a different configuration. You can also pair up the Navigator Control with the BreadCrumbs Control so that the customer can move back and forth through the catalog pages without starting over at the home page. For example, the catalog page for American History Books might look like this with both the Navigator and BreadCrumbs Controls.
The Navigator Control uses 5 templates to define the appearance of each item: CategoryTemplate, SelectedCategoryTemplate, SubcategoryTemplate, SelectedSubcategoryTemplate and SeparatorTemplate. The Category templates are used to display top-level categories and menu items, while the Subcategory templates are used to display sub-category items. The Selected templates are used to render items that are in the current path. The contents of the SeparatorTemplate are inserted between items in the menu.
 |
Several user controls are included as samples of how to use the Navigator Control. These are located in the Control directory of the distribution file and are copied to the Controls directory of your store. |
Additional features:
Copyright © 2005 by Structured Solutions. All rights reserved.
Version 1.3.2