Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site

You have heard people say how easy it is to incorporate new navigation controls, either those you roll on your own or commercial ones you purchase, into a MOSS 2007 Publishing site... or any WSS v3 based site for that matter. Well, now you can see how easy it is!

Telerik just posted a white paper and associated screencast demonstrating how to incorporate their RadMenu control in a Publishing site. I worked with Telerik recently to create these helpful resources to show how easy it is. The white paper (and screencast) is broken down into three pieces:

Manual deployment of the Telerik RadMenu files (assembly & skin files)
Configuring automated deployment of the Telerik RadMenu files via a WSS solution package (*.wsp)
Implementing the RadMenu control into a Publishing site

The second point listed above, configuring automated deployment, shows you how to create a Visual Studio 2005 project that will build a *.WSP file that you can use to easily roll the RadMenu out to various sites & servers in your SharePoint farm. Sure, it takes a bit longer to setup than the manual process, but it saves you time and maintenance headaches down the road.

Two things to note:

Most of the controls in the Telerik RadControls UI suite can be implemented in a SharePoint site using the same technique outlined in the white paper & screencast.
The controls, including RadMenu, are not restricted to Publishing sites... you can add them to any WSS v3 based site.

» White paper & screencast: Adding the Telerik RadMenu Control in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site

Technorati tags: sharepoint, moss, wss, wcm, telerik, radmenu

posted on Wednesday, July 25, 2007 1:59 PM

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# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 7/25/2007 3:04 PM John Ross

Great stuff! We used the RadRotator in our implementation. The Telerik controls are top notch. Highly recommend them!

re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 7/25/2007 11:08 PM John Way

One note is that the flash functionality doesn't work on the Full Featured version of the radEditor. SharePoint strips out the object tags when you save the page. According to Telerik's support forum they are working on a fix, but it hasn't been released as of this comment.

http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/thread/b311D-mmbct.aspx

I have had great experiences with Telerik in the past and I'm confident they will get this fixed, but it's worth noting if someone is looking to spend the money to purchase this component. The flash tool is the primary reason we are looking at purchasing the component.

Thanks,
John

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 7/26/2007 2:14 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

John-
So the white paper and screencast are about the RadMenu, not RadEditor. But, to your point, the RadEditor is just a field control. The problem is with the Publishing HTML field type in Publishing sites. The only fix is to create your own custom field type that wouldn't strip the tag out and use the RadEditor control rather than the SharePoint Publishing HTML file. Sounds like a fun exercise I might do... will post my results.

re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 8/15/2007 11:10 AM Mike

The white paper was great. It contained very clear information and I was able to get the menu and tabstrip both successfully added to my sharepoint installations. And Telerik's controls are the best in the business, in my opinion.

One problem was that I was unable to get the tabstrip to display my "currently selected" tab as the selected style. So, when I clicked on the "contact us" tab, sharepoint would navigate to the appropriate page, but the all of the tabs would be unselected. There's no visual feedback as to what tab you are on.

Anyone else run into this?

Thanks,
Mike

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 8/15/2007 11:23 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Mike-
I'd suggest posting this to the RadMenu forum on Telerik's site (http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/allthreads/b312H-t.aspx) as this isn't really a SharePoint issue, more of a control issue. One of the best features of the navigation provider model! :)

re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 8/17/2007 4:39 PM Mike

Thanks, Andrew.

I did just that and the Telerik folks told me no good. I'd need to wrap the control inside my own webpart to get that functionality to work properly. Keep that in mind before implementing this change... Most of my clients would insist on seeing their current tab being selected in the navigation control. Just an FYI.

Thanks,
Mike

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 12/3/2007 5:20 PM Frank-Ove Kristiansen

Hi, Andrew.
I've tried out this control now.
I've replaced it with my topmenu in default.master, but the menu always displays vertically.
How can I get it to display my menu horizontally? I've tested with using the property Flow, but no good...

Thanks,

Frank

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 12/3/2007 7:21 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Frank-Ove-
You mean trying to get the SharePoint menu to display horizontally? That's how it's done in the screencast... have you looked at the screencast yet on Telerik's site? For issues around their nav control, please contact them directly as they have a forum for such peer-peer assistance.

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 12/5/2007 4:08 PM Frank-Ove Kristiansen

Hi again.

I tested it on default.master, which has a SharePoint:DelegateControl holding the sitemapdatasource. Then the menu appeared all wrong (only the top node with all the subsites in the dropdown from this one).

I tested it in blueband.master, and it showed the menu as you demonstrated in the screencast.

I have been trying to find out why this is set up different among the master pages, but with no luck.
Maybe you could tell me the difference?

Thanks,

Frank

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 12/5/2007 10:06 PM AC [MVP MOSS]

Frank-Ove-
The site map data sources provide the XML structure to the rendering control, in this case Telerik. That sounds like the configuration of the Telerik control needed to be tweaked a bit. Hard to say without seeing it. If you just copied the Telerik relevant markup from one master to the next I would have expected it to look the exact same as that defines the rendering.

re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 1/8/2008 10:29 AM Kurt

Hi

We have incorporated the RadMenu into some of are MOSS Publishing sites.

My Question: Is there a property that I can add in SPD to turn off the Flyout menu. I just want to show the root nav. The whitepaper only shows ExpandAnimation and CollapseAnimation properties.

-Kurt

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 1/9/2008 12:16 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Kurt-
Please use the Telerik support forums for support on their products.

re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 5/17/2008 7:25 AM Glyn

Hi Andrew,
We've created a custom field type, using the telerik radtreeview control. This works great for us when adding as a column to a list and then using the regular new/edit pages to display it - however we are having great difficulty getting our custom field type to display on a custom list form. We think we have to register the assembly etc on the page, but we're not sure how to bind the control to a particular field - or event get it to display at all!

Any help or pointers would be much appreciated.
Thanks
Glyn

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 5/17/2008 8:49 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Glyn-
I'm not sure that's going to be possible because what's show in the list view is defined by the RenderingPattern "DisplayPattern" in the field type definition.

re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 5/18/2008 7:09 AM Glyn

Thanks Andrew -
I think the DisplayPattern is used for the list view mode (in which case it can be displayed as a text field, which should work ok), however it's the edit and new modes that we need to crack. I'll keep looking, thanks for the help.
Glyn

# re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 5/18/2008 9:23 AM AC [MVP MOSS]

Glyn-
Oh in that case, you want to use a custom rendering control, not just a field type. This is outlined in the SDK (as well as in my book & class... sorry, couldn't resist the plug!).

re: Incorporating Telerik's RadMenu in a MOSS 2007 Publishing Site 7/31/2008 3:28 PM Mohammed Barakat

Great Subject :)

Check this Url for using RadControls with MOSS 2007 by creating new ASPX Pages that use RadControls & which run under the Context of MOSS

http://mohammedbarakat.blogspot.com/2008/07/using-ajax-technology-radcontrols-with.html

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