skmMenu 

Quick Links

Using skmMenu

• First Steps
• Creating a Menu

Getting Started

So, you've downloaded skmMenu and are ready to start using it in your ASP.NET Web applications. First things first - if you have downloaded the source code download, compile the project into an assembly (a .dll file). The easiest way to do this is to use Visual Studio .NET. (Note: the VS.NET Project file included with the skmMenu download is for Visual Studio .NET 2003. If you are using Visual Studio .NET 2002 you'll need to create a new project and manually move over the files into your project... See this FAQ for more information...)

If You Are Using Visual Studio .NET

To get started, create a new ASP.NET Web application using either VB.NET, C#, or J#. Next, open an ASP.NET Web page in Design mode. You can now add skmMenu to the Visual Studio .NET Toolbox. In Visual Studio .NET 2003, just right-click on the Toolbox and choose to Add/Remove Items. (In Visual Studio .NET 2002, right-click on the Toolbox and choose Customize Toolbox.) This will display a dialog box with two tabs:

• .NET Framework Components
• COM Components

Make sure the .NET Framework Components tab is selected and then click the Browse button. Navigate to the skmMenu.dll assembly, and click OK. This will add a Menu item to your Toolbox. At this point, you can add skmMenu to an ASP.NET Web page by simply dragging and dropping the Menu from the Toolbox onto the Designer. You can then tweak its properties through the Properties pane.

You will also need to add skmMenu to the Project's References folder. To accomplish this, right-click on the References folder in the Solution Explorer and choose Add Referene. Then navigate to the skmMenu.dll assembly and click OK.

If You Are Not Using Visual Studio .NET

If you are not using Visual Studio .NET, download the binary version of skmMenu. This will include the file skmMenu.dll. Copy this file to your Web application's /bin directory. To add skmMenu to an ASP.NET Web page, open the Web page and add at the top of the page:

Then, wherever you want the skmMenu to appear in your page, add the following:

Creating a Menu

To use skmMenu you must either programmatically create the elements of the menu or bind an XML file to the skmMenu control. The simplest approach is to bind an XML file to the menu; in fact, the menus you see on this site use XML files. While XML files are the simplest approach, they also suffer from being static - that is, if you need to display menu items based on, say, user permissions, then you'll want to programmatically build the menu.

There are examples available that illustrate both how to bind an XML file to the menu control and how to build one up programmatically. The Stylin' XML Demo - available online - shows how to bind an XML file to the menu. If you download the skmMenu examples package, there are a couple of examples that illustrate programmatically creating a menu.

One question you might have when creating an XML file is, "What must be the structure of the XML document that is bound to the menu?" To answer this question, read: Examining the XML Structure.