FP98: How to Work With Navigation Bars

This article describes the functionality and use of navigation bars in Navigation view in Microsoft FrontPage 98.

The navigation bar is a graphical or textual page element that incorporates navigation hyperlinks to pages that are part of a FrontPage Web. Navigation bars are created automatically when you create a FrontPage Web by using a wizard or by creating a navigational structure in Navigation view in FrontPage Explorer.

The navigation bar works in conjunction with Navigation view in FrontPage Explorer. This allows FrontPage to automatically regenerate navigation bars every time you change the structure of your Web.

Navigation view allows you to create a hierarchical structure proceeding from the home page to any or all pages in your FrontPage Web. Navigation view also allows you to see and alter this structure of links from any page in your Web.

While the navigation bar properties may look the same on each page throughout the Web, the actual navigation bar generated by FrontPage will be unique to the individual page on which it appears.

The exact links generated by the navigation bar are determined by the relative position of the current page in relation to the remainder of the navigational structure. These relative links are referred to by the terms Parent Level, Same Level, Back and Next, Child Level, Top Level, Home Page, and Parent Page.

Parent Level

This option creates links to all pages connected by a horizontal line at the level of the Navigation view immediately above the current page. Links will not be created for pages not connected by a horizontal line at the level immediately above the current page.

Same Level

This option creates links to all pages connected by a horizontal line to the current page. Pages not connected to the current page by a horizontal line will not be included.

Back and Next

This option creates either one or two links to the files connected by a horizontal line to the left of the current page (back) and/or to the right of the current page (next). Pages all the way on the left end of a level in the structure are connected by a Next link, while pages all the way on the right of the structure are connected by a Back link. Links will not be created for pages if no other files are immediately adjacent and connected by a horizontal line.

Child Level

This option creates links to all pages connected by a horizontal line at the level of the navigational structure immediately below the current page. Links will not be created on pages that are not connected by a horizontal line at the level below the current page.

Top Level

The home page or any page that is present in the navigational structure, which is not connected by a line from another page, is considered a top- level page. A top-level page always includes the home page. However, it also includes any pages present in Navigation view that are not connected to other pages by means of a horizontal or vertical line.

Home Page

This option is not relative to the location of the current page in the navigational structure. It always generates a link to the home page of your FrontPage Web.

Parent page

This option creates a link to the individual file directly above the current page and connected by a vertical line in Navigation view.

Adding a New Page

When you create a new page in your web, it is not automatically added to the hierarchical structure you see in Navigation view. You can add pages to the structure by switching to Navigation view, clicking the page you want to add in the Files pane, and then dragging it to the Navigation pane. When you drag a file in this way, a line automatically appears, connecting it to the nearest page. Drag the new page until the line drawn connects the page to the page you want to use as its parent.

NOTE: A "circle-slash" icon indicates that the action cannot be carried out. Usually this means that the page already exists in the navigational structure. A page can exist in one place only in the structure.

Moving Pages Within the Structure

If you decide that the page should be somewhere else in the structure, you can drag the page from its current location to the new location and FrontPage will redraw the connecting line as you move it.

For more information about navigation bar properties, click the Index tab in FrontPage Help, type the following text and then double-click the selected text to go to the "Navigation Bar Command" topic.

-and-

For more information about navigation bars, click the Index tab in FrontPage Help, type the following text and then double-click the selected text to go to the "Using Navigation Bars and Shared Borders" topic.

For information about inserting a navigation bar on a page that has no peer pages, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: If you insert a navigation bar on a page that does not use themes it will appear as text. When you apply a theme, the graphical appearance of the navigation bar will be defined by the theme. All built-in themes behave this way. If you do not see a navigational structure in Navigation view when you create your navigation bar, then your navigation bar will appear as text even if you then apply a theme. For additional information about themes, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: Inserting the navigation bar within a shared border region allows you to add, modify, or delete navigation bars across your web site easily. For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: When you insert a navigation bar in the main body of a FrontPage Web outside of the shared border region of your page, you can successfully create a navigation bar that does not share the same properties as the navigation bar used in the rest of the FrontPage Web. While this works well for FrontPage-based extended Web servers, the navigation bar outside of the shared border region doesn not appear correctly if you publish to a server where the FrontPage 1.1 or 97 Server Extensions are installed. For additional information, please see the following article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

Inserting a Navigation Bar

To insert a navigation bar in FrontPage Editor, follow these steps:

1. On the Insert menu, click Navigation Bar.
2. In the Navigation Bar Properties dialog box, select the options you want.
3. Click OK.