E-mail this pageCreating a Navigation Object
A navigation object is a collection of links that will form all or part of the navigation column on the left side of your Widget page. The navigation object allows you to link not only your own pages, but also pages from elsewhere on the college's site and elsewhere on the Web.
To begin building a new navigation object, click on the Create Navigation button in Widget's right window. (To edit an existing navigation object, click on the Edit button beside the object's name.)
If you are creating a new navigation object, your first step will be to give the object a title--use a title that clearly identifies the nature of the links in this navigation object, since you may wind up with more than one and you'll want to be able to tell them apart.
Once you've entered the title, click on the Create Navigation button to introduce the main navigation object editing window.
Adding Internal Links to Your Navigation Object
Most of your work in this window will be a matter of building the menu from a list of pages that you have already created, but you'll first have to tell Widget where those pages are. Towards the right side of the screen, you'll see a drop-down list that prompts you to Select a Subweb . From this list, pick the subweb for which you are building a navigation object.
Once you've selected the subweb, the Select a Page listing below will show all of the pages that you have created in that subweb.
Adding a given page to your navigation object is then a simple matter of clicking on the page from the Select a Page list and then clicking the Add Page button at the bottom of that list. For instance, if "An Introduction to Widget" were selected, as in the illustration above, the Add Page button would add that entry to the navigation object (here named MyNavBar), as illustrated below.
Organizing Navigation Object Links
You can also add headings to your navigation object: you need only type the text for your heading in the field beside the Add Heading button (see illustration above), and then click the Add Heading button. Subsequently, you can adjust the position of the heading or link entries by selecting one and clicking the Move Up or Move Down buttons as appropriate.
Creating a Link to an External Site
Not all of your links will be from your own subweb or even from one of Plattsburgh's web sites. Sometimes, you will want to add a link to your navigation object that points to site beyond Widget's indexing. At those times, you'll find the mechanism for doing so in the fields beneath the Add Heading field (above the Add Link field). To add, for instance, a link to Microsoft's Education web site, type the name of the site into the Title field, and type the full web address (URL) into the Location field.
Once you've entered the requisite information into the title and location fields, click the Add Link button, and you'll find that the new link has joined the list of existing ones in your navigation object.
