Let’s say you want to create a two-level menu for your application. For example, if you have an application built on the Northwind SQL Server sample application and we want a top-level tabbed menu of People, Products, Orders and Logistics. And we want a second-level menu specific to each top-level menu. For People, we would like to show a vertical menu on the left with two menu items – Employees and Customers. For Products, we want a different vertical menu with two menu items – Products and Categories. For Orders, we do not want a vertical menu. For Logistics, we want another vertical menu with Suppliers and Shippers.
This is very easy to do with Iron Speed Designer.
We assume that you have the top level menu built and configured appropriately and now want to add a second level menu to each of the pages.
Go to the ShowEmployeesTable.aspx page in the Design tab. Highlight the table cell around the Employees table, right mouse click and select Insert HTML, Column to the Left.
Drag and drop a “New Vertical Menu” from the Menu Panels section of the toolbox on the left. This will display a temporary vertical menu.
Press Configure on the new vertical menu. Select Menu 1 and click Edit. Rename the menu name to Employees and select the ShowEmployeesTable.aspx page. Repeat this for Menu 2 and rename the menu to Customers and select the ShowCustomersTable.aspx. Delete Menu 3. Press Close.
Press Save on this page.
Select Tools, Page Properties. You will see a new menu defined underneath MenuV. It will be typically called Menu1, Menu2, etc. If this is the first vertical menu you created, it will be called Menu1. Select Menu1 and go to the Bindings tab. Select the Menu Item to highlight to be Employees. Press OK to save.
Press Save on this page.
Select the ShowCustomersTable.aspx page from the Application Explorer.
We now want to drag and drop the newly created vertical menu on this page. So highlight the table cell around the Customers table, right mouse click and select Insert HTML, Column to the Left.
IMPORTANT: Drag and drop Menu1 from the Menu Panels section of the toolbox on the left. This will display the menu you created previously.
Select Tools, Page Properties and go to the Bindings tab. Select the Menu Item to highlight to be Customers. Press OK to save.
Press Save on this page. Rebuild and run your application. At this point, you should have the first vertical menu displayed on the Employees and the Customers table pages displayed – and the current menu item highlighted appropriately.
Repeat steps 1 through 11 for each new vertical menu you would like to create.
This example illustrates a top-level tabbed menu and a second-level vertical menu. However, this approach will work regardless of whether you want two levels of tabs, or two levels of vertical menu, or a top-level vertical menu and a second level tabbed menu.
This example is also shown in the AcmeOMS sample application.