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YUI Library Examples: Menu Family: Website Left Nav Using Animation With Submenus From JavaScript

Menu Family: Website Left Nav Using Animation With Submenus From JavaScript

This example demonstrates how to create a traditional, two-column page layout (using Grids) with an set of animated fly-out menu navigation in the left column. The left navigation is created using a Menu instance that is constructed using existing markup and enables the user to navigate to different landing pages for each Yahoo! product category. If JavaScript is enabled, submenus are appended to the items in the Menu, allowing the user to skip the product landing pages and proceed directly to a given property.

Begin by placing the markup for the two-column Grid on the page (this example uses the Grids Preset Template 1, 160px left). Next add the Menu markup for the root Menu instance to the left column of the grid.

1<div id="productsandservices" class="yuimenu"> 
2    <div class="bd"> 
3        <ul class="first-of-type"> 
4            <li class="yuimenuitem"> 
5                <a class="yuimenuitemlabel" href="#communication">Communication</a> 
6            </li> 
7            <li class="yuimenuitem"> 
8                <a class="yuimenuitemlabel" href="http://shopping.yahoo.com">Shopping</a> 
9            </li> 
10            <li class="yuimenuitem"> 
11                <a class="yuimenuitemlabel" href="http://entertainment.yahoo.com">Entertainment</a> 
12            </li> 
13            <li class="yuimenuitem"> 
14                <a class="yuimenuitemlabel" href="#">Information</a> 
15            </li> 
16        </ul> 
17    </div> 
18</div> 
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Use the onContentReady method of the Event utility to instantiate the Menu as soon as its markup is available for scripting.

1/*
2     Initialize and render the Menu when its elements are ready 
3     to be scripted.
4*/ 
5 
6YAHOO.util.Event.onContentReady("productsandservices", function () { 
7 
8    /*
9         Instantiate a Menu:  The first argument passed to the 
10         constructor is the id of the element in the page 
11         representing the Menu; the second is an object literal 
12         of configuration properties.
13    */ 
14 
15    var oMenu = new YAHOO.widget.Menu( 
16                        "productsandservices",  
17                        { 
18                            position: "static",  
19                            hidedelay: 750,  
20                            lazyload: true,  
21                            effect: {  
22                                effect: YAHOO.widget.ContainerEffect.FADE, 
23                                duration: 0.25 
24                            }  
25                        } 
26                ); 
27 
28}); 
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This Menu instance makes use of several configuration properties. Setting the "autosubmenudisplay" configuration property to "true" modifies its default behavior so that mousing over any item in the Menu automatically triggers the display of its submenu. The "hidedelay" configuration property is set to "750" so each submenu automatically hides 750ms after the user's mouse has left the menu. The "lazyload" property is set to "true" to help speed up the initial load time of the Menu instance by deferring the initialization and rendering of each submenu until just before it is initially made visible. Lastly, the effect configuration property is set to use the pre-canned FADE ContainerEffect instance bundled with the Container Core package to animate each submenu's opacity as it is shown and hidden.

Submenus are added to each item in the Menu by subscribing to the "beforeRender" event and setting the "submenu" configuration property of each MenuBarItem instance to an object literal containing the necessary data to create the submenu.

1/*
2     Define an array of object literals, each containing 
3     the data necessary to create a submenu.
4*/ 
5 
6var aSubmenuData = [ 
7 
8    { 
9        id: "communication",  
10        itemdata: [  
11            { text: "360", url: "http://360.yahoo.com" }, 
12            { text: "Alerts", url: "http://alerts.yahoo.com" }, 
13            { text: "Avatars", url: "http://avatars.yahoo.com" }, 
14            { text: "Groups", url: "http://groups.yahoo.com " }, 
15            { text: "Internet Access", url: "http://promo.yahoo.com/broadband" }, 
16            { 
17                text: "PIM",  
18                submenu: {  
19                            id: "pim",  
20                            itemdata: [ 
21                                { text: "Yahoo! Mail", url: "http://mail.yahoo.com" }, 
22                                { text: "Yahoo! Address Book", url: "http://addressbook.yahoo.com" }, 
23                                { text: "Yahoo! Calendar",  url: "http://calendar.yahoo.com" }, 
24                                { text: "Yahoo! Notepad", url: "http://notepad.yahoo.com" } 
25                            ]  
26                        } 
27             
28            },  
29            { text: "Member Directory", url: "http://members.yahoo.com" }, 
30            { text: "Messenger", url: "http://messenger.yahoo.com" }, 
31            { text: "Mobile", url: "http://mobile.yahoo.com" }, 
32            { text: "Flickr Photo Sharing", url: "http://www.flickr.com" }, 
33        ] 
34    }, 
35 
36    { 
37        id: "shopping",  
38        itemdata: [ 
39            { text: "Auctions", url: "http://auctions.shopping.yahoo.com" }, 
40            { text: "Autos", url: "http://autos.yahoo.com" }, 
41            { text: "Classifieds", url: "http://classifieds.yahoo.com" }, 
42            { text: "Flowers & Gifts", url: "http://shopping.yahoo.com/b:Flowers%20%26%20Gifts:20146735" }, 
43            { text: "Real Estate", url: "http://realestate.yahoo.com" }, 
44            { text: "Travel", url: "http://travel.yahoo.com" }, 
45            { text: "Wallet", url: "http://wallet.yahoo.com" }, 
46            { text: "Yellow Pages", url: "http://yp.yahoo.com" }                     
47        ]     
48    }, 
49     
50    { 
51        id: "entertainment",  
52        itemdata: [ 
53            { text: "Fantasy Sports", url: "http://fantasysports.yahoo.com" }, 
54            { text: "Games", url: "http://games.yahoo.com" }, 
55            { text: "Kids", url: "http://www.yahooligans.com" }, 
56            { text: "Music", url: "http://music.yahoo.com" }, 
57            { text: "Movies", url: "http://movies.yahoo.com" }, 
58            { text: "Radio", url: "http://music.yahoo.com/launchcast" }, 
59            { text: "Travel", url: "http://travel.yahoo.com" }, 
60            { text: "TV", url: "http://tv.yahoo.com" }               
61        ]  
62    }, 
63     
64    { 
65        id: "information", 
66        itemdata: [ 
67            { text: "Downloads", url: "http://downloads.yahoo.com" }, 
68            { text: "Finance", url: "http://finance.yahoo.com" }, 
69            { text: "Health", url: "http://health.yahoo.com" }, 
70            { text: "Local", url: "http://local.yahoo.com" }, 
71            { text: "Maps & Directions", url: "http://maps.yahoo.com" }, 
72            { text: "My Yahoo!", url: "http://my.yahoo.com" }, 
73            { text: "News", url: "http://news.yahoo.com" }, 
74            { text: "Search", url: "http://search.yahoo.com" }, 
75            { text: "Small Business", url: "http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com" }, 
76            { text: "Weather", url: "http://weather.yahoo.com" } 
77        ] 
78    }                     
79]; 
80 
81 
82// Subscribe to the Menu instance's "beforeRender" event 
83 
84oMenu.subscribe("beforeRender", function () { 
85 
86    if (this.getRoot() == this) { 
87 
88        this.getItem(0).cfg.setProperty("submenu", aSubmenuData[0]); 
89        this.getItem(1).cfg.setProperty("submenu", aSubmenuData[1]); 
90        this.getItem(2).cfg.setProperty("submenu", aSubmenuData[2]); 
91        this.getItem(3).cfg.setProperty("submenu", aSubmenuData[3]); 
92 
93    } 
94 
95}); 
96 
97 
98/*
99     Call the "render" method with no arguments since the 
100     markup for this Menu instance is already exists in the page.
101*/ 
102 
103oMenu.render(); 
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Finally, it is necessary to set the "position" CSS property of the root Menu instance's element (<div id="#productsandservices">) to "static" to match that of the "position" configuration property.

1#productsandservices { 
2     
3    position: static; 
4     
5} 
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Menu Family Examples:

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