Creating Menus

[wr1138]

Martin,

Would you consider describing the menu system? Some parts seem inuitive, others less so (use-case descriptions would be cool). If you just
expound for a bit I'll boil that into a doc (if need be).

For instance, these:
Main, Other, Top, User
and
Null, URI, joomlaXplorer ,Search, Registration, Simple Text, Contacts, Users

[counterpoint]

The menu system is not as well developed as I would like.

At present, "mainmenu" has special significance because the first entry in it is what appears on the home page (where there is nothing else to tell Aliro what to do).

Some standard list of menus is normally found in Mambo family systems (it gets tedious listing out systems - the ones that I'm familiar with are Mambo itself, Joomla in all its versions and MiaCMS - there are many others that may well have similarities). The list of names is really outdated, and tends to reflect the style of sites designed some yeas ago.

My inclination, subject to availability of development effort, is always to avoid the use of special names. So I would prefer to make the system work on the basis that the home page be selected explicitly by the administrator (although the system could by default make the first item in the first menu to be defined into the home page for a start). And I would prefer to have an arbitrary selection of menus created as necessary by the administrator.

Aliro is presently at a half way house with this, and it's a long time since I spent effort on this aspect of the menu system - recent work has been on the generation of actual menus with enough class and id tags to enable a wide range of styling possibilities, and also persistence of active menu marking through submenus and such like. (Right now, you can see some aspects of this at the development site for a new Aliro web site - http://s1.galley.net).

It's tricky to know the best way to make clear the distinction between a menu as a selection of named links - something that can be manipulated without knowing how it will be presented - and a menu as some kind of screen display. I don't think you're confused about this, but I can see how confusion could arise.

The list of choices for a new menu item depends mainly on what add-ons have been installed, and the names are specified in the packaging XML for each application. The two fixed entries are "Null" and "URI".

A "Null" menu entry is one that has a name but no link - its purpose is simply to be a place holder for a submenu.

A "URI" menu entry is primarily intended to point to other sites, and is simply a complete URI that is entered as a literal, and a name (like every other menu entry) that will appear in the displayed menu.

[wr1138]

Originally Posted by counterpoint

Right now, you can see some aspects of this at the development site for a new Aliro web site - http://s1.galley.net

Damn that looks good!

[counterpoint]

Well, I'd like to think it reflects:

1. Jim Galley's skills at site development
2. The power and flexibility of GBTheme, the Aliro theme on which the site is based, although with some modifications
3. The power and flexibility of the Aliro theme model.

[counterpoint]

I can report progress since writing the earlier description of the menu system.

In the latest code, which will form beta 8, there are no fixed names for menus (such as "mainmenu"). If you start with a bare framework, before you can create any menu entries, you will have to define at least one menu type (or simply one menu). This has a code and a name that will be used in the admin menu system.

Each menu (type) also has an ordering and where there is a need to make choices, say on which menu entry to match with an incoming URI, then the menu that comes earlier in the ordering will take priority.

The menu entry that defines the home page can now be selected entirely arbitrarily, although to keep use of the system simple, if no other choice has been made then the first menu entry in the menu that comes first in the ordering will be selected as the home page.

In practice, I'd expect most people to start off with a site that contains sample data - once we have some sample data that is.

[wr1138]

I have a vanilla installation (near beta8), added ut_aliro and ut_galley, created a new menu, added 3 URIs to it (pointing to arbitrary external websites). Call the user side - no visible menu. If I go to User Boxes, there's no new item I can create there (since I Only added 2 templates and no modules).

Is mod_simplemenu required at this point? I assume a module would have to be present to tell the menu where to be...or is some special consideration given to the menu which contains the "home" item in the default vanilla (no menu modules) state? Thanks

[wr1138]

Originally Posted by wr1138

Is mod_simplemenu required at this point? I assume a module would have to be present to tell the menu where to be...

Yes, a menu module is required to allocate a user-box view. mod_simplemenu is an excellent candidate.

[counterpoint]

Yes, that's right.

I don't know if things could be made clearer by an improvement in terminology.

What is going on here is that the Aliro framework menu management is working at a slightly abstract level, where it is building the bare elements that could be used to create actual menus. The bare elements are made up of pairs - a name and a link (relative or absolute). So far as I can see, building this abstract level of menu management into the CMS framework does not preempt any design decisions about what a menu actually looks like when the user sees it.

The framework also carries out standard logic such as taking a tree structure of menu elements and rendering it in the order needed for production of HTML.

Then there is naturally a need for something that is visible to the user, and transforms the basic information into HTML. In fact, the framework has enough code (not all of which has to be used) that the module can be very simple - or it can take on more responsibility and use less of the framework.