Navigation
Workplaces are distributed web-based environments. Navigation can be
complex. Many organizations follow a typical web design and look at navigation as
groups of hard-wired links. This creates a maintenance nightmare and puts
constraints on overall design flexibility.
CorasWorks
provides core navigation capabilities that are data-driven, dynamic, and respect
SharePoint security for UI security trimming. These capabilities make navigation
dynamic without the maintenance. For instance, if you add a site or remove a
site, they will automatically update.
Also note that other capabilities
within CorasWorks, such as all displays, are also dynamic and designed to minimize
maintenance requirements and maximize design flexibility.
CorasWorks offers four
main components on the presentation tier that make it easier for users to navigate
through a workplace. These navigation components are:
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The Workplace View
Advanced™ and SPS Workplace View Advanced™ web parts provide
easy-to-use tree view navigation of the workplace. They also simplify system
use by providing common menu options as part of the tree view. New
capabilities in Summer 2006 and Winter 2007 allow them to provide navigation of sites using
central configuration.
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The Special Site
Navigation™ web part enables the creation of dynamic
navigational menus for SPS portals, areas, sub-areas, and top-level site
collections. By utilizing this web part, you can create navigational menus for
a specific site, or you can create a global menu that can be used across all
of your SharePoint sites. This capability is very flexible, allowing you
to create custom displays. For instance, the page navigation used in the
showroom utilizes this capability.
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The Up To Navigation™
web part is an alternative to the SharePoint Up To link, which is used in
most SharePoint sites. When a user hovers their mouse over the web part, a
drop-down navigation menu is displayed with links to
all of the parent sites within the
current site hierarchy.
Each of these components utilizes a tabbed administration interface, which simplifies the process of
setting web part properties and customizing the interface via localization.
To learn more, we recommend that you:
-
Visit the Navigation showroom
referenced above.
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See the Generic Template
category of Workplace Foundation of the Solution Set. These templates
show different navigation looks.
-
Look at the various
solutions in the solution set to see how navigation is used.