Hour 19. Defining a Site s Structure and Providing Site Navigation

Hour 19. Defining a Site's Structure and Providing Site Navigation

In this hour, we will cover

• The basics of site navigation with ASP.NET

• Creating and defining your website's structure

• Showing the user's current location in the site's structure with the breadcrumb control

• Displaying the site's structure using the TreeView Web control

• Using the Menu control

At its most granular level, a website is nothing more than a collection of discrete web pages. However, typically these pages are logically related and categorized in some manner. For example, Amazon.com has its site broken down into product categories, such as books, music, DVDs, and so on. Each of these sections is further categorized by genre. The classification of a website's pages into logical categories is referred to as the site's structure.

After a site's structure has been defined, most web developers will create the site's navigation. A site's navigation is the collection of user interface elements used to assist users in browsing the site. Common navigation elements include menus, treeviews, and breadcrumbs. These user interface elements serve two tasks: They let the users know where in the site they are currently visiting, and they make it easy for the users to quickly jump to another part of the site.