Adding a sliding menu to your Bootstrap Application Layout control

Introduction

Since responsive webdesign (RWD) is on top of the list in most application development projects these days I assume most of us have been looking at the options within IBM Notes.

Bootstrap

In case you use the Bootstrap plugin in the Extension Library you have noticed that the menu in the left column get presented above the main column in smaller devices.

Image: Display on desktop

Image: Display on phone

As you can see in a more advanced application the menu options already suppress the content too much at the bottom. So what are your options?

Off Canvas Slide Menu For Bootstrap

In this post I will describe how I implemented in XPages a slide menu which is described here. We still use the Application Layout control with the Bootstrap RWD functionality since it contains more functionality than just to provide a navbar.

Step 1 – Provide a Menu icon

We need something (text, button, icon) from where we can initiate the appearance of the menu. In our case I choose to include a ‘hamburger’ menu icon in the navBarLogo property:

<xe:this.configuration>
<xe:simpleResponsiveConfiguration navbar=”true”
loaded=”true” navbarLogo=”/1432224591_menu-alt.png”
navbarLogoStyleClass=”extraMenu” navbarText=”MyApp”>
</xe:simpleResponsiveConfiguration>
</xe:this.configuration>

For example iconfinder provide great icons.

Step 2 – Register Click event for Menu icon

I included “extraMenu” as an additional styleclass. This styleclass we will use when the document is ready. We do this in a Script Block control:

<xp:scriptBlock id=”onLoadScript” type=”text/javascript”>

<xp:this.value><![CDATA[
$(document).ready(function(){
$(“.extraMenu“).attr(“id”,”nav-expander“);
//Navigation Menu Slider
$(‘#nav-expander‘).on(‘click‘,function(e){
e.preventDefault();
$(‘body’).toggleClass(‘nav-expanded’);
});
$(‘#nav-close’).on(‘click’,function(e){
e.preventDefault();
$(‘body’).removeClass(‘nav-expanded’);
});

// Initialize navgoco with default options
$(“.main-menu”).navgoco({
caret: ‘<span class=”caret”></span>’,
accordion: false,
openClass: ‘open’,
save: true,
cookie: {
name: ‘navgoco’,
expires: false,
path: ‘/’
},
slide: {
duration: 300,
easing: ‘swing’
}
});
});]]></xp:this.value>
</xp:scriptBlock>

When the document is ready we assign the ID attribute to the navbarLogo since this ID is used to bind an click event on. We could have bind the event directly on the class but I am not sure if the ID is used in any other way (don’t break what isn’t broken).

Step 3 – Provide a menu that slides in.

In this example I simply provide the menu that is used in the demo:

<nav>
<ul class=”list-unstyled main-menu”>
<!–Include your navigation here–>
<li class=”text-right”>
<a href=”#” id=”nav-close”>X</a>
</li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu One<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu Two<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu Three<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
<li>
<a href=”#”>Dropdown</a>
<ul class=”list-unstyled”>
<li class=”sub-nav”><a href=”#”>Sub Menu One<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
<li class=”sub-nav”><a href=”#”>Sub Menu Two<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
<li class=”sub-nav”><a href=”#”>Sub Menu Three<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
<li class=”sub-nav”><a href=”#”>Sub Menu Four<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
<li class=”sub-nav”><a href=”#”>Sub Menu Five<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
</ul>
</li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu Four<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Menu Five<span class=”icon”></span></a></li>
</ul>
</nav>

Step 4 – Include the supporting files

The demo uses the following files which you should add to your application as resources:

<script
src=”/jquery.navgoco.js”>
</script>

<xp:this.resources>
<xp:styleSheet href=”/main.css”></xp:styleSheet>
</xp:this.resources>

The result

The image below gives you an indication what the result looks like. When you click the hamburger icon the menu appears from the right. With the X marker you can close the menu again.

Notice that my content is not suppressed below the menu as the Bootstrap plugin would do.

Download

An demo XPages application is available on my dropbox account