The Menu Builder lets you organize your tables and views into multi-level cascading menu for quicker navigation. This feature is particularly useful if you have a large number of tables.

Once a project is created, menu consists of tables selected for the current project. Depending on the selected layout menu will appear horizontally or vertically. On this stage menu is single-level. More info on selecting layout.

To open Menu builder, go to the Visual Editor page and click .

You can change already created menu entries by double-clicking them or selecting Properties with right-mouse button. You can add new groups and links. Notice that group can also include the link or serve just as folder for other groups and links.

Note: You can always change the type of any menu entry from link to group and vice versa using Properties dialog.

Delete item button deletes currently selected menu item.

Reset to defaults button resets menu to its default state - as if project and menu was just created.

Link attributes

While adding or editing a link you are able to specify the following link attributes:

Type - Select between a hyperlink or a group.

Link type - Select between PHPRunner page or External page.

Link to - If Link type is set to External page, then add link to any web page. If Link type is set to PHPRunner page, then firstly select a table within your project and then one of pages that are available for selected table. Usually, you can choose between:

More info about what kind of PHPRunner pages you can create and use.

Click '...' button next to the page type list box to set link parameters. Example of link parameter: orderby=aDescription. The link with parameter is carsbcolor_list.php?orderby=aDescription. If you want to display the Country Sales Report order by the Sales figures you can set the parameter to orderby=dSales. If you have more complex parameters the best way to proceed would be to copy the parameter string from the application URL and paste it into the parameter dialog.

Note that user group permissions are applied to the internal links (PHPRunner pages) and not applied to the external ones.

Link text - Link text will be displayed as menu item title. If multilanguage support is turned on in your project, you will see Multilanguage... button that allows translating link text into several languages. More info on multiple language support.

Style - Set menu item text style by adding custom CSS style description. You can add several CSS properties using semicolon between them.

Here are several examples of how you can modify menu item text style:

Open in new window option allows opening the links that compose a menu in new browser window.

Cascading menu

Note: Cascading menu is supported by all layouts except Default.

To create a cascading menu, you can drag and drop already created menu entries building cascading structure. Or you can right-click certain menu item or blank area near menu and create new group or link.

If you select layout with vertical menu you will see Tree-like menu check box that allows to display vertical cascade menu that expands/collapses menu entries.