Wayfinder: _current state_ with dropdown?

I have a navigation with 5 tabs. The current page highlights the corresponding tab using the Wayfinder Snippet.

One of those 5 tabs has a dropdown submenu. If a submenu item is clicked, no tab is highlighted by Wayfinder once the new page loads due to the fact that the dropdown disappears and only reappears if you roll over it. So, if Wayfinder is highlighting the submenu item in the dropdown, you would never know it because it is hidden.

This nullifies the purpose of the Wayfinder in this instance.

Is there a way to get the Wayfinder to highlight the Parent of the dropdown? This way the overarching category is still highlighted so you know where you are.

There is definitely a parameter for this, and it will take a custom template. Check the wiki out and it should be there.

Quote from: rthrash at Oct 30, 2007, 12:58 PM

There is definitely a parameter for this, and it will take a custom template. Check the wiki out and it should be there.

I see this: &parentClass

But, how do you apply this CSS to the Wayfinder Snippet, which automatically creates an id for each document?
I don’t see anywhere in the documentation how to do this. In fact, the documentation for Wayfinder is seriously lacking.

Oh my god... so easy...

IF YOU ARE AN INTUITIVE GENIUS! This documentation is seriously lacking.

The full documentation:

&parentRowHereTpl
the template chunk for the current document if it is a folder

Might as well be Chinese instructions for assembling a radio.

Thank you for the general pointer to reinvestigate the wikki. I would have never tried this purely accidentally-discovered solution to my problem.

Hi nate22,

As we’re a purely volunteer project, why not step up and help out by improving the Wayfinder documentation? I’m sure others would be thankful, as I certainly would be. Unfortunately, life and keeping food on the table sometimes detracts from writing documentation. Very glad you got it worked out!

Quote from: rthrash at Oct 30, 2007, 03:35 PM

Hi nate22,

As we’re a purely volunteer project, why not step up and help out by improving the Wayfinder documentation? I’m sure others would be thankful, as I certainly would be. Unfortunately, life and keeping food on the table sometimes detracts from writing documentation. Very glad you got it worked out!

If I understood it, I would!

Right now, I’m trying to figure out how to create a "dead link" in the Parent of a dropdown (because I don’t want the Parent to direct anywhere)... and along my journey I’ve found this little gem:

&ignoreHidden
default: FALSE
values: [ TRUE | FALSE ]
description: The ignoreHidden parameter allows Wayfinder to ignore the display in menu flag that can be set for each document. With this parameter set to TRUE, all documents will be displayed regardless of the Display in Menu flag.

WHATEVER that means.

On each page in the manager, there is a "show in menu" checkbox. Wayfinder normally respects this menu option and only creates menu items with this checked. You can override this behavior by using the &ignoreHidden param in your wayfinder calls.

What is a dead link?

Quote from: rthrash at Oct 30, 2007, 04:20 PM

On each page in the manager, there is a "show in menu" checkbox. Wayfinder normally respects this menu option and only creates menu items with this checked. You can override this behavior by using the &ignoreHidden param in your wayfinder calls.

Yeah, it’s funny-- I’ve been comparing the Wiki to the MuddyDogPaws site and some Wiki-person obviously reworded everything on the MDP site to just make slightly more sense. It really makes a difference and yet takes up just as much space (or less!)-- for example, your explanation was just as long as the original, but more thorough and comprehensive.

What is a dead link?

In standard HTML, you would use <a href="#">dead link</a> to create a dead link.

Since my Parent element in the menu is just an "umbrella term" for the two children in the dropdown, there is no need to actually link the Parent element to any content-filled page. However, for the Wayfinder to work, it must be a link. So, I would like it to be "dead," as in "not pointing/linking to anything."

Now, here’s another interesting example of the Wiki/MuddyDogPaws difference:

From Wiki

&ph - (FALSE)
name of a placeholder to set instead of directly returning the output results

From MuddyDogPaws

&ph
default: FALSE
values: name of placeholder
description: To display send the output of Wayfinder to a placeholder set the ph parameter equal to the name of the desired placeholder. All ouput including the debugging (if on) will be sent to the placeholder specified.

MuddyDogPaws makes no kind of grammatical sense. It even seems to be saying the opposite of what the Wiki says.

Based on what the Wiki says, I think &ph is what I need to make a "dead link" but I have no clue how to implement it onto my one menu item.

Muddy Dog Paws has an extra "display" as the second word; remove that and it makes a lot of sense. Many snippets in MODx make use of placeholders. Perhaps the problem is not with Wayfinder but with a current lack of experience with MODx in general? Not remotely saying that in a negative manner as everyone starts out fairly green typically.

Your "dead link" is in actuality an empty anchor link, and their use can actually cause problems in certain browsers (e.g., causing the page to reload or scroll to the top). What you might consider doing in order to accomplish what I think you want to do is to add the [!FirstChildRedirect!] snippet to your parent page, or alternately create your parent containers as weblinks pointing to the appropriate child documents.

In MODx there are many ways to get to the same end result. With flexibility comes a degree of ambiguity, but also a lot of power when it all finally clicks. Good luck!

If you need every parent to be a # you can do that by setting a custom rowTpl (row template). Then you will also need to create a custom innerRowTpl or else they will default to the rowTpl. You should be able to acomplish any variation that you need with the custom template options.

I find that the MDP docs are the most complete and seem to be more up-to-date.