Professional DevExpress™ ASP.NET Controls

Chapter 4. Adding SiteMaps, Navigation, and Pop-Up Dialog Boxes

Menus and navigation mechanisms are essential for providing easy access to the products and services offered by your Web application. Pop-up modal windows add focused dimensionality to your Web application. Other considerations include providing cues to areas of interest or places you'd like to guide the user and search engine optimization — making it easy for Web crawlers to lead others to your products and services.

This chapter covers menus, navigation controls, and pop-up dialog boxes as well as how to build a site map and use the DevExpress ASPxCloudControl. All these important supplemental elements will help you provide your users with a richer experience and help you guide them successfully around your Web application.

Implementing a Navigation Bar

About 20 years ago, an urban legend circulated that someone created a graphical DOS-based batch menu system and a local auto company paid $500,000 for it. Whether true or not, it was a great story at the time. I recall creating a graphical-based menu in DOS Basic version 7.1, which included drop down, clickable items. Customers were willing to pay for these items to be fabricated from scratch because they didn't exist as components at the time. (In fact, components as a product were an almost unheard-of concept.)

These days, customers want menus and navigability, and they are still willing to pay for them but not pay for the dozens of hours it might take to fabricate them ...