The Category Navigation Bar A set of graphical or textual buttons containing hyperlinks to pages that are part of the same web structure. Sometimes shortened to "Navbar", it allows users to browse back and forth through a group of records, or allow to view items associated with a selected category or letter/character. Wizard can be accessed from the InterAKT tab of the Insert bar:
It creates a navigation bar used to browse through categories and this way, you can have items belonging to the same category displayed at once.
Before applying the wizard, you need to first create a recordset A recordset is the result of executing an SQL query. It is composed of multiple rows, each row having multiple columns. The columns presented in the query result depend on the column list declared in the query (they can belong to different tables). The number of rows and their order depend on the query conditions (WHERE, GROUP BY, HAVING, ORDER). The recordset acts as a source of dynamic data in web applications. in page. If you attempt to launch the wizard in an empty page, there will be guiding pop-up windows that will help you find your way. For detailed instructions on this, click here.
After creating a recordset, start the Category Navigation Bar Wizard. The user interface has two steps:
To set the interface options for the first step of the wizard, follow the instructions below:
In the Connection drop-down menu select the database A database refers to data organized and stored on a computer that can be searched and retrieved by a computer program. Most industrial-strength and many smaller database applications can be addressed using SQL (Structured Query Language). connection to use for retrieving data.
In the Items recordset select the recordset that contains the category items. For it you will build the navigation bar.
In the Items table select the database table (used in the recordset) that stores the items to be listed.
In the Foreign key A foreign key is a field from a database table that refers to (or targets) a specific key, usually the primary key, in another table. This is a convenient way of logically linking information from related tables in the same database. For instance, a table that stores information about products can contain a foreign key that references the primary key field in a table that stores manufacturers. This way, each product has an associated manufacturer – its associated foreign key points to the unique identifier of the manufacturer. Please note that the foreign key is not unique, but the referenced field (the primary key in the referenced table) usually is. drop-down menu select the table column that links each item to the category it belongs to.
The Numeric checkbox specifies whether the selected Foreign key column is of a numeric type (integer, double etc.). The state of this checkbox is altered each time you change the selection in the corresponding drop-down menu, according to the meta-data retrieved by Dreamweaver for the specified table column.
In the Category table drop-down menu select the database table that stores the categories to navigate by.
In the Primary key A primary key is one or more table columns whose values uniquely identify each record in a table. In general, a primary key is defined on a single column, but it is not uncommon to have it defined on two columns. drop-down menu select the table column that uniquely identifies each category.
In the Display field drop-down menu select the table column that stores the category label you want displayed in browser.
The buttons in the lower part of the interface (they appear on both steps of the wizard) offer the next functionalities:
With the < Back / Next > buttons you can navigate through the wizard's steps.
Click Finish when you are done configuring the wizard.
Click Cancel to exit without the new settings to be applied.
The Help button brings you to this help page.
Click Next to move on to the second step of the Category Navigation Bar Wizard.
To set the interface options for the second step of the wizard, follow the instructions below:
The Navigate using drop-down menu presents two options. Depending on your selection, the last control on the user interface differs varies:
To display the navigation categories one at a time (between Previous/Next controls) select the Previous/Next links option:
To display all categories at the same time (as links), select the Category labels option:
The Current skin In web development, skins are custom graphical appearances that can be applied to certain websites in order to suit the different tastes of different users. Such websites are referred to as being skinnable, and the process of writing or applying such a skin is known as skinning. Applying a skin changes a website's look and feel - some skins merely make the website more aesthetically pleasing, but others can rearrange elements of the interface. used in your site (in all the pages included, not only the current one) has its name displayed in bold text. The Change skin button offers the possibility of choosing another skin out of the available ones (aqua, kollection, arktic, formal) or none, if you don't want to use any skin. Click here to see the window launched when this button is clicked.
Note: The skin is applied not only on the displayed buttons, but also on the dynamic table A dynamic table is an ordinary HTML table which contains dynamic content (usually within a Repeat Region). Its number of rows changes according to the number of records retrieved from the database. added by the wizard.
The Show links as buttons drop-down menu is only enabled when you select the Previous/Next link option in the Navigate using drop-down menu. Decide whether to use buttons or simple links for the navigation controls.
As mentioned above, the last control of the user interface differs according to the selection in the first drop-down menu:
Previous/Next links option selected: check the Display empty categories option if you want to the categories with no items to be shown.
Category labels option selected: with the Handle empty categories radio group decide if you want the categories with no items to be shown as links, as text, or not at all.
After clicking Finish, you will notice in your page the translators (illustrations corresponding to the code block behind the action) added by the Category Navigation Bar Wizard in Dreamweaver's Design View. In the dynamic table, the column names are obtained from the names of the corresponding database columns, after dropping the "_abc" ending. You can customize the dynamic table added as you wish (change the names of the columns, align their content etc.):
This is how the Server Behaviors tab of the Application panel looks like after applying the Category Navigation Bar Wizard (with the settings above) in an empty page:
As you can see, the wizard adds: the Category Navigation Bar server behavior A server behavior is a reusable component for server-side development. They add blocks of code to your pages for accomplishing specific tasks. Dreamweaver comes with several default server behaviors and the InterAKT extensions add many more to this list., a Repeat Region server behavior, and the respective dynamic elements (the repeat region A repeat region lets you display multiple records from a recordset within a page. Any dynamic data selection can be turned into a repeat region. However, the most common regions are a table, table row, or a series of table rows. and the dynamic texts form the dynamic table). You can edit any of them by double-clicking their name in this list.
To see how your page looks in browser, after saving, uploading and previewing it, click here.