I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on a robust NATPAGE menu system. We would like to be able to use the MENU control on most pages in our system so the user can navigate directly to programs from within whatever module their page is currently being displayed in. Currently that MENU control has a little over 500 elements.
It seems multi frame pages would be ideal for this but I don’t think they work with NATPAGE pages.
I could simply load the menu into a local data area for each module that displays the page but I’m concerned that with a lot of fetch returns, we would be holding on to a large amount of data, just in case the user rolls back up the chain.
I am toying with creating a global data area that contains the structure required for the MENU control, but the existing system uses subprograms extensively so I would need to repopulate the globals regularly (as programs/subprograms do not share a common global area). My concern here is that I may end up with a lot of global areas setup.
Independent variables don’t allow for the structure required for the MENU control although a combination of independent variables and globals would eliminate the need to re-read Adabas each time a new global area needs to be created.
So, my question is, does anyone have ideas on how I could efficiently implement a “global” menu system within NATPAGE type pages? I am still green enough with Ajax that you shouldn’t consider any obvious solution as something I must have already considered.
What I have done for a client project, and this isn’t really uncommon,
is using a VSPLIT with a “navigation pane” (plus an info area) to the
left and a larger “main pane” with the actual application / function page
on the right hand side.
The navigation has a tree menu plus a direct command field, the structure
of the menu is kept, like what you are having in mind, in a GDA.
I am moving forward with doing it via a global area while using independent variables to prevent the need to reread Adabas when repopulating the global in subprograms. I have some issues with a slight hang since adding the menu to each page but that appears to be tied to my Firefox installation as IE isn’t exhibiting the problem nor are other developers in Firefox.
Actually, I was on FF10. FF10 broke the position of the menus by shifting them down and right of where they should be. I have a ticket open with support for this.
As FF 3 is all that is currently available from Mozilla other than 10, I rolled back to 3. Currently GreaseMonkey is the only plugin currently installed on mine (firebug was on 10).
I am told most of our users are currently on 3. Nothing is preventing them from updating on their own though. One of the developers without the “hang” is on FF9. I’m not sure about the other developer. I will definitely have to ensure it isn’t a FF 3 problem before I push the menu out to production.