External Links in Navigation

I read somewhere that external links in the navigation bar were not supported in the RC?  Is this true?  If so, is there a workaround?  This would be a major deal breaker for me.  Thanks!

Hi Kevin,

We will not have external pages for the RC release. An option for a workaround would be creating a custom control that wraps a navigation control like RadMenu, RadPanelBar, RadTabStrip, RadTreeView where you build the nodes manually. You should expose a public  property ( properties) where you can use external links to build the control.

All the best,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Hi there.
Just a follow-up question since I too would like the external page functionality back before mid Januar ;-)
Could someone please help give some more details on how to build a workaround user control,
and running Rad-menus outside Sitefinity give some license issues, are we going to load the external page inside an IFRAME?

Regards,
Torbjorn

Hello Torbjorn,

You can use the RadControls that comes with Sitefinity only in the context of the application, otherwise you need a separate license for these controls.

Kind regards,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Hello Ivan, and thanks for the really immediate response!
I certainly want to keep the RadControls inside the "context of the application", but I fear it means that the page has to be created inside the CMS only, and placing an .aspx file somewere in the application directory tree won't suffice.

Can you therefore please make a sketch on how we set up a workaround User Control for the external page without having to leave the Sitefinity context?

Thanks,
Torbjorn

Hello Torbjorn,

1.Crate a user control or custom control that use one of the RadControls mentioned above.
2. Bind the control to a datasource of links that will point to your external pages.
3. The external pages should be located in the root of your project or its subfolder. These pages have to be physical files - aspx web pages.

In this case you should not get a trial message, since you are going to work only in the same application. Another option us using the standard ASP.NET controls that comes with .NET Framework 4.0.

All the best,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

I could not run RC because of localization error.

Since external links in navigation seems to be missing, can anyone tell me if an option to link to internal pages is available in the RC.

Link to pages in Site map from various places without having to create a page.

Like havin a link to contact at mulitple places in the sitemap linking to one page only.

I would assume that this would be a common request.

Markus

Hi all,

I would suggest we transfer the discussion to this thread:
www.sitefinity.com/.../link-to-external-and-internal-pages.aspx

This will help us focus all opinions in one post.


Sincerely yours,
Kalina
the Telerik team

Hi there.
Back to the user control for external navigation issue:
I'm just not able to prevent leaving the Sitefinity context when transferring to an external aspx page from my custom control menu. As expected, the menu shows up fine when refreshing the CMC created page that includes this control, but menus are to be 'clicked' on which necessesarily send us off to the target page where this menu is no longer part of the required context, and the developer license message pops up every now and then. It doesn't help to place the aspx page is in application's root folder. 
So it looks like only an IFRAME solution can save me from purchasing the developer package which is a costly hack to a missing basic feature of the RC4.
Please show me that I'm wrong by providing an example that would work :-)
Cheers,
Torbjorn

Hello Torbjorn,

You can use NavigationControl where you can add links from each location you want.

Greetings,
Ivan Dimitrov
the Telerik team

Thank for you reply Ivan.
Using an external link in the Navigation Control works like a redirect only, sending me off Sitefinity when I really want to include my external aspx page that actually resides within sitefinity's application directory tree. Having it as part of the internal sitemap structure is also highly important. It looks the include page functionality of 3.7 can only be accomplished by a roudtrip to custom control creation followed by a widget import. Too bad.
Anyway, thanks a lot for trying to help me out on this problem.

Best regards,
Torbjorn

I might have spoke a couple days too soon.  Looks like this will be added this week.  Couldn't easily find this page, but here's a list of the 4.1 "what's new". 

http://www.sitefinity.com/asp-net-cms-features/roadmap.aspx

Can't wait to see if they both made it.