One of our high priority areas for the CMS has been the development of suite of navigation tools. The goal of each tool is to automatically build portions of the navigation for a site based simply on the directories and content added. When used in tandem the tools provide complete, automated navigation capability for a site. Additionally we wanted the tools to be non-invasive i.e. not require special coding or tags to invoke.

To that end we have completed three nav tools. The first nav tool automatically constructs a standard breadcrumb path. The tool probes the structure of the web site and adds the necessary code during deployment of the site. The current configuration allows for an unlimited directory depth.

The left navigation tool is designed to display a maximum of the first(parent) and second(child) level directories (assuming root is zero) of a site. If visiting the root/home directory, the left nav tool will display only the first level directories. If any of these first level(parent) directories are visited, the parent directories will continue to be displayed along with any children of the visited directory.

The sub navigation tool is designed to display a maximum of two levels simultaneously with those being either the third level or lower. Which two are displayed is dependent on the current directory visited. That is, if the fourth level is visited then the tool displays the fourth and fifth levels.
Additionally, logic has been added to detect a variety of special situations such as visits to leaf nodes resulting in no display by the sub navigation tool.