Adding a Navigation Menu Bar

Owned by Fiona Sargeant (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Sept 29, 2022 by Anthony GeorgeVersion comment

Overview

PhixFlow allows you to create navigation menus that always appear. This allows for a single menu to be setup that can be accessed from any point in an application. It is also possible to setup a menu that only displays when called, for example if you create a configuration menu for your application that is only shown when the user clicks a button.

An application menu, in version 9.0+ of PhixFlow, is configured as a screen and as such can be positioned in different places on the screen. Template menus are provided within the Template Packages that are styled to fit with the look and feel of the rest of the items in the template package. See Installing Template Packages if you need to install one.

Create a Custom Menu

  1. From the Screens home page click Add New.
  2. Complete the details:
    • Name, indicative of the menu being created.
    • Open Maximised, Untick. We will specify the size of our menu later.
    • Menu section, scroll through the templates and click on the desired navigation menu.
  3. Click Create Screen.
  4. The screen opens
  5. Click Properties from the toolbar.
    • Untick Allow Manual Resizing
    • Set Position to Pinned to... the position of your menu. For example Pinned to Top.

    • Set the Height and Width for your menu item. We suggest:

      • for top menus: height of 45px

      • for side menus: width of 250px
  6. Save your changes.
  7. Close and reopen the menu to see the updates.

For a horizontal menu a drop-down button will not work. To create menu with drop-downs; see Startup Actions.

Adding Menu Options

To add buttons to your navigation menu that open a screen:

  1. Find the screen in the repository.
  2. Drag the screen onto the menu bar.
  3. Provide a display name for the button and continue
  4. PhixFlow adds the menu button and automatically creates the actionflow.

To  edit the actionflow, right-click the button and select Display Actionflow; see Understanding Actionflows.

When an application user clicks the menu button, the screen opens automatically.

Automatically Display a Menu

To automatically show a navigation menu when an application starts up we use, Startup Actions, which are set to run when an application opens:

  1. In the repository navigate to the startup section and add a new startup action using the  Add New button.
  2. Tick Default Desktop Action, if you want this to be for desktop devices.
  3. Tick Default Mobile Action, if you want this to be for mobile devices.
  4. Action Method, select the actionflow that opens your navigation menu screen. If you hae not yet created one use the  Add New button to do so. Help on this topic can be found in Understanding Actionflows.
  5. Save your changes and now when you open your application the avigation bar will appear.