Dynamic Menu?

[Chodhry]

Bloc, then you should consider making a few changes to the portal menu manager and that particular theme.

That theme should have flexible menu buttons (like theme black 22) which can be easily created for any link and added to the main top menu. You can have this option in the menu manager in TP settings to add the newly created button/link in the main menu or not. (This was the reason I had to remove the default buttons bar at the top). And if you could add the functionality of using DHTML to create drop down menu elements for the main navigation. It can just improve the ease to a great deal. (check the attachment)

I know this thing can't work with the themes with buttons as images (like Oxygen theme) and may make many of existing themes useless but may be you could give it as a mod to exisitng installation and not a partof the actual software.

What do you think?

[bloc]

Not a bad idea, it will solve managing increasing number of links..but as you say its hard on button-based themes.

Menu manager is now linked to a blocktype called "catmenu"..but I am wondering if it would be better to make it render like the template_menu() function in SMF. An extra tp_template_menu function which you just call in the theme. And it doesn't need to stop there..support for multiple menus and nested menus could then easily be added into it, by adding menu ID's and child-menu support.

[Chodhry]

Well in that case it might be confusing for users to have it working with SMF default buttons. the biggest concern would be the positioning. Like I may want one of my buttons to be placed before default "help" button and one after "Help" button.

What could even be better is if it could provide the functionality of replacing the default buttons with your own menu using same buttons layout with the option of adding all the default buttons in the TP menu template in any order you may want. Default buttons can be added in a drop down box like we have in SSI block. So if we want to add a default button to our menu we ccould just select it from there. and if its a custom link we could type in or may be you could give an option to store all of your custom links in another box to be selected while creating the menu. (In most of the cases we would be using flexible articles for additional pages. So I think this custom link thing can be handdled by selecting article in the menu item but just incase if it is an external link.)

Check the two menu bars i just designed using TP navigation to help you understand what i am saying.

So we can have a replacement menu buttons bar at the top where the default buttons reside and may be a left menu bar block like windows style ( see small shrink/collapse buttons). So it's up to user to mess with the default buttons or choose the left menu bar. (left menu bar block can also be be used for image button based themes)

In both of these menus "user functions" button should be changed to "register" for guests.

[Chodhry]

ok, here are new menus. I hope they will give you some help in arranging the navigation for your site as well. In the help section, site usage FAQ is the default help area of SMF and rest of the links could be links to different sections/forums/threads/popups.

So you see how much ease this little functionality bring into TP. Now one could create any type of website using flexible articles and powerful menu manager.

[Crip]

Where can I get buttons like that??

[Chodhry]

Crip, this is actually a functionality I was hoping to be part of next TP version.

Mods, my thread turned into something else. Could you please split it from the suggestion post and make a new thread in the relvent area of the forum. So that I could get a review on my site now.

[Crip]

Split a thread?..I still dunno how.. IchBinâââ,¬Å¾Ã,¢ knows how.. I like your layout, may I have a copy??

[Chodhry]

crip this is from default button sets in Web menu pro 4 (trial). You can download it on linko.com

[Crip]

crip this is from default button sets in Web menu pro 4 (trial). You can download it on linko.com

I can't read Chinese, Jap..whatever that gibberish was.. :down:

[gerrymo]

Crip. Go to the post that is to be the start of the new thread, and click the split button. Its fairly obvious from there what to do. Once yyou have your new thread, you can move it to the forum that you feel it should be in.