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Customization of SharePoint 2010 navigation – publishing site

February 12th, 2010

In my previous blog, I customized the SharePoint 2010 publishing site. Now I will give you some idea that how you can create customize the navigation according to new look and feel. There are different ways to customize the navigation of SharePoint. I like to use a custom control which returns navigation in the form of xml and then I transform it from xsl. In this way you can easily control the output of the navigation or any other control.  

<SafeControl Assembly=“SalmanSPControls, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=49908bd985021621“ Namespace=“SalmanSPControls“ TypeName=“*“ Safe=“True“ />You need to add a reference in your SharePoint master page. It would be like this. 

<% @ Register Tagprefix=”SWC” Namespace=”SalmanSPControls” Assembly=”SalmanSPControls, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=49908bd985021621″ %>  

Then I created a class for navigation inherited from ASP .Net Menu and xml based control class. This class is not doing much but just adding all the items in xml. It’s getting these items from Menu items. In the master page when you use this control you need to specify the data source id. If you search in your master page you can find a tag like this.  

<PublishingNavigation:PortalSiteMapDataSource EnableViewState=”false” ID=”leftNavDataSource” Runat=”server” SiteMapProvider=”CombinedNavSiteMapProvider” StartFromCurrentNode=”true” StartingNodeOffset=”1″ ShowStartingNode=”true” TreatStartingNodeAsCurrent=”true” TrimNonCurrentTypes=”Heading” />  

There will be two tags like above one for global navigation and other for current navigation. For left navigation you have to look the current navigation site map data source. In portal site map data source you can also change the SiteMapProvider, depending on your needs. You can use the current or combine or global. These site map providers are defined in web.config. You can find the difference of these site map providers in SharePoint documentation.
Now you have to replace the existing navigation control with your new custom navigation control. After that your master page changes are over. Now your control is ready and will display instead of default SharePoint current navigation. Here is how your navigation control will look like.  

<SWC:Navigation cacheperpage=”true” EnableViewstate=”false” ID=”LeftNav” Runat=”server” DataSourceID=”leftNavDataSource” Transform-XslName=”leftnav.xsl” Transform-CacheOutput=”false”/> 
 
But this control is just returning xml. You need to transform it in an html through some xsl. For this I created one xsl file and use some style classes to give it new look.  Here is the piece of code I use in my xsl to transform navigation xml into new look. 
 
<xsl:template match=”/“>
    <xsl:if test=“count(Navigation/Item) &gt; 0“>
        <div id=“nav-y“>
             <p>
                 <a href=“{Navigation/Item/@Url}” title=”{Navigation/Item/@Title}“>
                      <xsl:value-of select=”Navigation/Item/@Title” disable-output-escaping=”yes“/>
                 </a>
             </p>
             <ul>
                 <xsl:apply-templates select=”Navigation/Item” >
                     <xsl:with-param name=”level” select=”1” />
                     <xsl:with-param select=”@Title” name=”sectionTitle” />
                 </xsl:apply-templates>
              </ul>
        </div>
    </xsl:if>
 </xsl:template>
 
<xsl:template match=”Item“>
    <xsl:param name=”level” />
    <xsl:param name=”sectionTitle” />
    <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test=”$level != 1“>
            <li>
                <xsl:if test=”@Selected=’True’ or @Current=’True“>
                    <xsl:attribute name=”class“>Selected</xsl:attribute>
                </xsl:if>
                <a href=”{@Url}” title=”{@Title}“>
                    <xsl:value-of select=”@Title” disable-output-escaping=”yes“/>
                </a>
                <xsl:if test=”count(Item) &gt; 0 and @Current = ‘True“>
                    <ul>
                        <xsl:apply-templates select=”Item“>
                            <xsl:with-param name=”level” select=”$level + 1” />
                            <xsl:with-param select=”@Title” name=”sectionTitle” />
                        </xsl:apply-templates>
                    </ul>
                </xsl:if>
            </li>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
            <xsl:apply-templates select=”Item“>
                <xsl:with-param name=”level” select=”$level + 1” />
                <xsl:with-param select=”@Title” name=”sectionTitle” />
            </xsl:apply-templates>
        </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
</xsl:template>
 
 So now after doing all these changes my new site will look like this.
  
   

Hope you enjoyed customization of SharePoint 2010 navigation in publishing sites.  

Cheers

Categories: SharePoint 2010 Tags: , , , , , ,
  1. Dylan
    May 14th, 2010 at 21:58 | #1
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    This is great thanks for sharing. Can you post the code for your custom control that returns the navigation? How does the control get to the navigation?

  2. Office 2007 Enterprise Product Key
    November 28th, 2010 at 10:32 | #2
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    I just wanted to comment your blog and say that I really enjoyed reading your blog post here. It was very informative and I also digg the way you write! Keep it up and I’ll be back to read more soon mate

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