By triangular on

Hello, this is very confusing to me. Please help.

I want to create a new menu item which will show in the left hand menu list, just like the built-in "navigation" menu shows. I simply want a single line for the menu's name, and a few drop-down submenus. This should be easy to do. I only want the same kind of thing that the "Blogs", "News Aggragator" and "Administrator" menu's already provide.

For example, when I click on the Blogs menu, 2 things happen:
1) I see a blank page with the single word "blogs" at the top left (I haven't configured anything for blogs, thats ok).

2) The menu item drops down and shows a single dot next to an entry called "My Blog".

The News Aggragator and Admin menu panels function similarly. So if I want to create the following structure:

TEST MENU (top level) and it drops down when clicked on to reveal:
--- Test Menu 1 (clicking goes to an outside URL)
--- Test Menu 2 (clicking goes to an internal node)

How do I do that? I'm going crazy here. There's nothing that directly explains how to make a submenu off of a newly created top-level menu. The problem I keep having is that I have to define the path to the link, but what if the link is just a top-level menu? If I give it a path then it cant drop down to show the submenu choices, it just follows that path. I dont want it to direct anybody anywhere, I want it to reveal submenus. Please help.

Christian

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

triangular’s picture

triangular commented

Not one answer? Nobody knows? Is it not possible to create drop-down submenus in Drupal like the built-in menus that already do this?

Christian

triangular’s picture

triangular commented

If Drupal will not do this by default, is there a good module for this that anyone can recommend?

artatac’s picture

artatac commented

I have been working on adapting Garland to have such a menu system see
http://74.220.203.213/horstead51/

Drupalace-1’s picture

Drupalace-1 commented

I'm not sure I understand the goal fully. I think it's this: You want certain menu items to act only as headings for the submenus nested below them, not as functioning links to content. When clicking on such a menu item, you want it to simply reveal the nested submenu beneath, and not jump to a new page.

Is that correct?

If so, I don't off-hand know the answer, but there are many modules that affect menu functioning. Maybe one of these would work:

DHTML Menu
http://drupal.org/project/dhtml_menu ("hides" submenus, but I think all menu items will still link to some content)

Nice Menus
http://drupal.org/project/nice_menus

Javascript Tools
http://drupal.org/project/jstools (see Activemenus)

Have you had the chance to try any of those?

--------
A site by, of, and for the Drupal newbie: http://www.drupalace.com

triangular’s picture

triangular commented

Yes, basically I just want to create my own menus that act just like the Navigation menu does. Why is it built-in with the Nav menu but yet we can't create our own like that? The menu can be a top level menu, and you simply click it to get the submenus underneath it. For example if I want a menu for CARS and under that it has TOYOTA, FORD, MITSUBISHI....then why should they all have to be on the menu making it longer than necessary, if I have other menus for different categories as well? thats a whole page of menus potentially. They should open to submenus the same as the Navigation menu does. Ill check these out that you mentioned. Thanks.

Christian

artatac’s picture

artatac commented

if it is of use the theme is at
http://74.220.203.213/ventura08/GarlandDropdown.zip

reagrds

Joe

Drupalace-1’s picture

Drupalace-1 commented

Now I'm a little more confused about what you're looking for. I thought it was menu items that only reveal submenus, without linking to any new page. But the Navigation menu, which you say is ideal, *doesn't* work that way.

Here's what I mean: In the Navigation menu for www.example.com, I have the menu item "Administer", with its submenu items hidden. If I click on "Administer", the submenu items appear, which is good – but they appear on a new page to which my browser has jumped, www.example.com/admin. That page shows all my admin options.

Then, I may choose to click one of the Navigation > Administer submenu items, like "Site building". That opens up the new sub-submenu items under "Site building", which is fine, but I also go to a new page, www.example.com/admin/build, which has my site building options.

And so on. In other words, I don't see the Navigation menu operating like what I thought you're trying to describe...

If you *are* trying to make menus behave more like the Navigation menu, what special behavior is your Navigation menu showing that your other menus aren't showing?

Or is there some other example of a menu, even on a non-Drupal site, where we can see the type of menu you're looking for? A live example would help make your goal very clear.

--------
A site by, of, and for the Drupal newbie: http://www.drupalace.com

mhtchurch’s picture

mhtchurch commented

I wondering about the same kind of deal. I tried overriding the theme_menu_links function to do this, but the problem with that is that you don't have access to anything but the primary, and the active secondary links correct? That seems also the case in _phptemplate_variables().

I think it would do alot of good to have the question of where the data for all the nav items is located. How can I get to all of it and not just the stuff that's being displayed?

Onehorse’s picture

Onehorse commented

After messing with this ad nauseum, and EVEN messing up the functionality of the Navigation/Administration menu itself, I finally broke down and decided to take the small print clue on the screen serious...

I tried pluggin in "node/add" and the first drop down in each Menu seems to work...subsequent menues are all confused so still putzing with it.

Will come back with a workable procedure if I find one.

mcfilms’s picture

mcfilms commented

I wonder if the OP or anyone else in this thread would find Quickmenu useful. http://drupal.org/project/quickmenu

I have used it and it is great!

A list of some of the Drupal sites I have designed and/or developed can be viewed at motioncity.com

jgheyen’s picture

jgheyen commented

I can't figure out how to do this either. Do we need to add special HTML code to do this? It seems to be used on many sites and I thought it would be part of the general processing and that I just couldn't figure out what that was.

clau_bolson’s picture

clau_bolson commented

jgheyen, if your question is how to mank a simple drop down menu, the answer is Superfish
http://drupal.org/node/436336

If the question is if every menu item must be attached to a node, the anwer is Special Menu Items
http://drupal.org/node/336390