{menu} Macro
Description
The {menu}, {submenu}, {sub-submenu} and {menuitem} macros are all the same macro! The different names are merely to aid legibility of menu definitions by allowing semantically/heirarchically correct structures to be built in the following form:
Each of these macros creates an item in your menu, grouping any sub-items (if found) in to a "pop-up" menu of their own, which can contain further items and pop-up menus.
There are a few other features provided by these macros, such as automatic hiding of items you don't have access to and auto-cleaning of unwanted separators, but we'll discuss those in the examples at the bottom of this page.
Requirements
This macro requires Theme Builder 2.0 or above.
Usage
To recreate the hierarchical structure shown above, use the following notation:
{menu}Menu
{submenu}Submenu
{sub-submenu}Sub-Submenu
{menuitem}Menuitem{menuitem}
{sub-submenu}
{submenu}
{menu}
We'll show examples of common structures in the examples at the bottom of this page.
Parameters
| Property |
Required |
Default |
Notes |
| class |
 |
|
The CSS class name to assign to an item in a menu |
| subclass |
|
|
The CSS class name to assign to a pop-up menu that's associated with an item in a menu |
| id |
|
|
The HTML ID (must be unique for the entire web page) associated with an item in the menu |
| subid |
|
|
The HTML ID (must be unique for entire web page) associated to a pop-up menu that's associated with an item in a menu |
| autohide |
|
true |
The following values are permitted:
- true – the item will be removed if it doesn't contain a hyperlink
- false – the item will always be shown regardless of whether it contains a hyperlink or not
- disabled – the item will always be shown, but if it doesn't contain a hyperlink it will be "visually" disabled (e.g. grey text and faded icon)
|
| custom |
|
false |
The following values are permitted:
- false – a normal menu item, which may contain a pop-up menu if there are hierarchically lower items found
- true – allows you to embed just about anything in a menu item, defaults the "autohide" setting to false and prevents you from having a pop-up menu associated with the item
|
| flat |
|
false |
The following values are permitted:
- false – a normal menu item designed for use in a hierarchical structure
- true – a "flat" (non-hierarchical) menu item
|
Examples
Basic Use
The most basic use of these macros is to output a single menu item:
{menuitem}[Home Page|Home|Go to the Home Page]{menuitem}
Which results in:
We've used a wiki notation link in the example above to create a link to the Home page within the current space. You can use any valid wiki notation link inside a menu item so you could, for example, link to a news item, different space or even a user profile.
It should be noted that if you link to a page in a menu item, and then rename that page, the menu item will not update itself to use the new name of the page. You can get round this problem by using the wikimenu macro which allows you to create a normal bullet list of links on a page (which will be updated if you rename pages) and then import them in to your menu.
For all common locations within Confluence, we recommend using the menulink macro as it will be more reliable, especially if any of the common locations are changed in a later version of Confluence. For example, to create an ultra-reliable link to a home page, use:
{menuitem}{menulink:home|tooltip=Go to the Home Page}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
This might seem like overkill, but it really is far, far more reliable to link to common Confluence locations this way. Anyway...
You can have several items at the same level, for example:
{menuitem}{menulink:home}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
{menuitem}{menulink:dashboard}Dashboard{menulink}{menuitem}
Which gives:
As you can see, the items are merely output as an unordered list. To put them in to an actual menu bar, simply wrap them in the menubar macro
as shown below:
{menubar:id=demo1}
{menuitem}{menulink:home}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
{menuitem}{menulink:dashboard}Dashboard{menulink}{menuitem}
{menubar}
Which results in:
As you can see, the items are shown next to each other because they are at the same hierarchical level. To create pop-up sub menus, you need to create a hierarchical structure...
Hierarchical Menus
To create hierarchical structures, you wrap menu items in the other macros as shown earlier, for example:
{menuitem}{menulink:home}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
{menuitem}{menulink:dashboard}Dashboard{menulink}{menuitem}
{menu}Level 1
{menuitem}{menulink:home}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
{menuitem}{menulink:dashboard}Dashboard{menulink}{menuitem}
{submenu}Level 2
{menuitem}{menulink:home}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
{menuitem}{menulink:dashboard}Dashboard{menulink}{menuitem}
{sub-submenu}Level 3
{menuitem}{menulink:home}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
{menuitem}{menulink:dashboard}Dashboard{menulink}{menuitem}
{sub-submenu}
{submenu}
{menu}
Which results in:
When used within the menubar macro, the structure above looks like this:
Here's another quick example to show that you can "indent" the menu structure at any point, not just the last item in a level:
{menuitem}{menulink:home}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
{menu}Level 1
{menuitem}{menulink:home}Home Page{menulink}{menuitem}
{menu}
{menuitem}{menulink:dashboard}Dashboard{menulink}{menuitem}
Which gives:
CSS Customisation
See Customising Menu Styles.
Hints and Tips
None at present.
Frequently Asked Questions
None at present.
Added by
Is there any further information or a resource on customizing the menus using CSS...I seem to be figuring it out by trial and error, but would love any info that could help speed up the process.
I'd like to know how to customise menus using CSS as well. Any chance you could update the section "CSS Customisation... To follow".
How do I customise a left navigation area, so that it's 200px wide, a grey background colour. How do I change the font size and font colour of text in that area?
We've started a tutorial on menu customisation in our Tutorials section. There's still a few bits to finish but it should help with the majority of tasks.
I am trying to create another menu bar on my page. My titles are quite long and are going off the right side of the screen. I would like to do one of two:
1. I would like to be able to wrap the text so it can be two lines.
2. In the Notation guide it states you can use "scrolling true". Where is that placed in script (using your example above)?