Menu Minipanels

Megamenus (explanation) built using (mini) Panels, which provides tremendous flexibility in what can be displayed.

Click-by-click beginner's tutorial: http://drupal.org/node/984560#comment-3922442

Note: I'm focusing on Metatag until Drupalcon Portland, after that I'll resume work on Menu MiniPanels again.

Benefits

By making additional sub-pages available from the main navigation the module provides a quicker route for visitors to find the pages they are looking for. Used carefully, megamenus can be a great enhancement to a site's UI and can contribute towards improving conversion rates on e-commerce sites, e.g. it helped double the conversion rates on the site the module was originally developed for.

Why MiniPanels?

There are two main reasons why minipanels are used:

1. Usability: once an initial learning curve is gotten past the module becomes very easy to use.
2. Flexibility: there is a tremendous amount of configuration available via minipanels and almost anything can be added to one - views, blocks, nodes, other menus, and even raw PHP code if the PHP Filter is enabled. Further, there are multiple layouts available and more can be easily built. Further, each minipanel can be customized differently, as can be seen from some of the example sites below.

Requirements

• The qTip jQuery library (see below).
• The minipanels submodule from Panels.
• CTools.

Installation: Drush

1. Download the module and its dependencies:
   drush dl menu_minipanels panels ctools
2. Enable the modules:
   drush en -y menu_minipanels
3. Download the qTip library:
   drush download-qtip

Installation: Manual

1. Download the menu_minipanels module, along with its dependencies ; Panels and CTools; move them to your site's sites/all/modules/contrib directory.
2. Visit the qtip download page and download the minified qTip version.
3. Extract the archive and find the file named: jquery.qtip-1.0.0-rc3.min.js
4. Place this file in the sites/all/libraries/qtip directory, i.e. the file should be available from sites/all/libraries/qtip/jquery.qtip-1.0.0-rc3.min.js
5. Enable the module from the modules admin page (admin/modules).

Configuration

• Visit the "Menu Minipanels" settings page (D6: admin/settings/menu_minipanels, D7: admin/config/user-interface/menu_minipanels) to configure several defaults; this will help give the site a consistent look across all menus.
• Use the "Menu selection" table on the settings page to control which menus are configured to work with Menu_MiniPanels.
• Create a minipanel for the content to be displayed (documentation on using Panels).
• After selecting a minipanel the qTip configuration options will appear; these options mirror qTip's regular configuration.
• Once finished configuring the options, save the menu item as normal - this will cause the menu item to be instantly activated and display.

Credits

• Thanks to Craig Thompson for the fantastic qTip library.
• Willie Seabrook for building the module.
• Current development sponsored by Mediacurrent.
• Previous sponsors: Bluespark Labs (Drupal 7 port), themesandmodules.com (initial development).
• kiamlaluno for conducting a pre-release code review of the initial Drupal 6 release.

Downloads