A DHTML Menu Builder menu is comprised of
three items:
- Groups
The groups are containers and control the space used to hold
commands and separators.
- Commands
These are the basic items of your menus. The commands are
the options that user selects to navigate through your web site
using the menus.
- Separators
The separators are a special kind of command whose only
purpose is to create a separation, with a thin line, between two
commands.
In other words, a Project is made of menus. Each menu is made
of groups that contain commands and separators.
The illustration below diagrams this relationship:

Since it is the most general item, the project controls the way the menus will work on your web site. The group is a container; it controls the background color, images and borders
of the menus. The commands control the actions of the menus; the color and font used by the menus is also controlled at this level. Of
course, these are just the most basic settings of each item.
Later on in this Help, you will find that DHTML Menu Builder provides
unprecedented formatting options to let you make your menus look
exactly they way you want them to appear.
Adding, Renaming and Deleting Groups
After a project is created, you must next create a group.
Once you have created a group, you will then be able to add commands
and separators to it and this will complete the creation of a menu.
A project can have as many menus as you need.
To add a group, do any one of the following steps:
- On the Menu menu, click Add Group.
- Press the F6 shortcut key.
- Click the Add Group icon
from the toolbar.
When you create a group, DHTML Menu Builder will add an entry in
the left side of the main window and will wait for you to
type a name. This name is an internal reference for DHTML Menu
Builder and is independent of the actual caption of the added
item. Both the name and the caption can be the same if you wish.
After entering the name of the group, DHTML Menu Builder will
auto fill the Caption property for you. Change it if you need to.
The Caption is the actual text that will be displayed when your menu
is viewed with a browser.
To rename the group, just select it and then choose Rename from the Edit menu. Alternatively, after selecting the group name, you can also press F2 or just click it again (after a short pause so it is not interpreted as a double-click) and you can edit in place. Note that if you have already set the caption for a group, DHTML Menu Builder will not update its caption when you rename the group.
To delete a group, select it and then choose Delete from the Edit menu.
It is important to note that when you delete a group, you will always delete any command(s)
created under it. This is because groups are containers that hold commands; if you delete the container, all the
commands under it are deleted as well.
To
learn more about groups, click here.
Adding, Renaming and Deleting Commands
In order to create commands, you need to have at least one
group in your project.
Each command represents an option in your menu. Commands can have
actions associated with them to perform functions when a user
activates them with the mouse.
A command can instruct the browser to open a page (and optionally to display it in a new browser window), to send an
email,or to display another
group and create what is known as a submenu.
To add a command, do any one of the following steps:
- On Menu menu,
click Add Command (or click Add
Separator to add a separator).
- Press the F7 shortcut key (or press
the SHIFT+F7 shortcut key to add a separator).
- Click the Add Command icon
from the toolbar (or click the Add Separator icon
to add a separator).
Right after the command entry has been added, DHTML Menu Builder
will let you name the command. Again, this name is just an internal
name used by DHTML Menu Builder and is not the actual text that will
be displayed on the menus when these are viewed on your web site
with a browser. To change the text to be displayed for this item,
just change the caption.
To rename a command, just click over it to select it and then
select Edit form the menu and then Rename.
Note that if you have already set the caption of this item, DHTML
Menu Builder will not update its caption.
To rename a command, just select it and then choose Rename from the Edit menu. Alternatively, after selecting the command name, you can also press F2 or just click it again (after a short pause so it is not interpreted as a double-click) and you can edit in place. Note that if you have already set the caption for a command, DHTML Menu Builder will not update its caption when you rename the command.
To delete a command, select it and then choose Delete from the Edit menu.
To
learn more about commands click here.
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