telerik r.a.d Menu wrapper for MCMS 2002

Introduction

Recently, Microsoft and Telerik announced the availability of the r.a.d. Editor MCMS Edition. This extended version of the r.a.d Editor Web Control provides a replacement for MCMS's out of the box HtmlPlaceholder, offering a rich content editing experience, integration with MCMS Resource Galleries all without the requirement for client side ActiveX. In addition to the r.a.d Editor control, Telerik offer a suite of superb Web Controls for ASP.NET development which are also ideal for use with MCMS. This sample is a simple wrapper for the r.a.d Menu control which includes a number of additional MCMS specific design time properties.

Whilst this sample is fully functional, it is only intended to demonstrate the approach to extending the r.a.d. Menu control for use with MCMS. Therefore it is not intended for production use as for example, no exception handling is implemented. The approach shown in this sample programmatically sets up the r.a.d Menu control, and currently hard codes the menu style as Basic Horizontal. An alternative approach could emit an XML menu configuration file allowing for full control of the Menu styles, images and so forth.

The r.a.d Menu Wrapper Control

The sample simply augments the standard r.a.d Menu control's design time properties with additional properties specific to MCMS. The screenshots below show the sample in action, using the WoodgroveNet sample site Channels, and the sample in design mode. The MCMS specific properties are shown in the MCMS Options group:

Note: as shown above the path to the CssFile, JavaScript etc require full absolute paths if you are using the cmsRobotMetaTag control in your templates (it includes a BASE element at runtime).

Implementing the sample

To implement the sample add the Control to your Visual Studio.NET toolbox, drag onto a template, and set the required properties. The control exposes the following MCMS specific Design Time properties:
 

Name	Type	Description
MCMS Options
DisplayPostings	Boolean	Determines if postings are included in the rendered menu.
HidePostingName	String	Name of a posting to be omitted from the rendered menu, to support the use of a 'default' posting.
StartChannel	String	Name of a channel to use as the base channel for the menu.

Please feedback any suggestions for improvements to this control.

For more information on the Telerik r.a.d Menu control, please visit www.telerik.com.

Download the sample files: RADMENU.zip (156Kb)