BDC DrillDown Menu Options

The default settings may be just what you need, but chances are that you'll eventually be looking for a way to customize your menus somewhat. You can do that by passing an options object to the ddMenu function.

Below, you will find all of the options available for your manipulation. For more detail on the CSS class options, see the CSS Class Reference page.

A Note on Defaults

The defaults for DDMenu would more properly be called "default defaults". These defaults are available to you in the object $.fn.ddMenu.defaults. Since this object is accessible, you can modify it to your heart's content — and then every menu created afterwards will use the modified object for its default values.

For instance, if you had ten menus on a page and decided that all of them should have menu panels drop in from the top and out through the bottom, you could add these two lines of code before you created any of the menus:

$.fn.ddMenu.defaults.inDirection = 'north';
$.fn.ddMenu.defaults.outDirection = 'south';

Any menu that you create after those lines execute would have the new default in and out directions.

Option Description Default Value
rootTitle This is the text that is displayed on the root menu panel. Each other menu panel is titled according to the text of the branch item that was used to activate it. Since there is no such branch to activate the top-level, root panel, this property is used instead. 'Menu'
easing
inEasing
outEasing
These three options let you change the algorithm used to make the menu panels move in and out. The values of inEasing (for animating a panel coming in on drill-down) and outEasing (for animating a panel going out on drill-up) take precedence, but if one or both are not set, then the value of easing covers for whichever direction is not specified.

The default value of easing is usable with basic jQuery, but if you wish to use any other easings, you will need to include the jQuery Easing plugin in your page.

Any valid easing value can go here (for the values available from the Easing plugin, see its Web site). DDMenu doesn't care if you're using the Easing compatibility plugin, or an older version of the plugin that uses different names — as long as your version of Easing understands the parameter, then it will work.
'swing'
null
null
duration
inDuration
outDuration
These three control the time that it takes for an animation to run from start to finish. The values of inDuration (for animating a pancel coming in on drill-down) and outDuration (for animating a panel going out on drill-up) take precendence, but if one or both are not set, then duration covers the duration for whichever is not specified.

The time is given in milliseconds (so set it to 1000 for one second). It's useful to extend this for some of the more complex easings such as easeOutBounce. Shorter durations are more useful for simple easings (such as the default).
500
null
null
direction
inDirection
outDirection
These three options determine which direction an inward animation starts from (in relation to the menu itself) and which direction an outward animation ends at. The values of inDirection and outDirection take precedence, but if one or both are not set, then direction covers the direction for whichever is not specified.

Cardinal directions are used here, so instead of specifying left, right, up, or down, you should use north, south, east, or west.
'east'
null
null
scrollSpeed This property controls the speed that a menu panel scrolls when a scroll button is clicked upon. Like duration, a lower number means faster. However, unlike duration, this number is not the amount of time that it takes to complete the scrolling animation — that would cause menu panels of different lengths to scroll at different speeds — it's the amount of time (in milliseconds) that it takes for a panel to scroll two pixels. 10
initial This is a path name containing the titles of all of the menu panels (not counting the root panel) that one must traverse in order to get to the specified menu item. If this item exists in the menu, then it becomes the initial menu item. The initial item is highlighted on this page, and when the page is created, the DDMenu automatically navigates through the menu so that the user can see that initial item.

The path is formed by using the text for each label that you'd have to drill down through to get to the target item, verbatim, separated by the 'separator' character (see below). Thus, for the menu at the right, the initial value is BDC DrillDown Menu|Documentation|Options Reference. Be careful — spaces in the path count.
null
separator If one of the menu panel titles contains the default separator character, then you cannot build the path with that character in it. That's the purpose of this property — you can make the separator something that you are certain will not appear in the menu. '|'
menuClass
menuPanelClass
scrollPaneClass
scrollUpClass
scrollUpHoverClass
scrollUpClickClass
scrollDownClass
scrollDownHoverClass
scrollDownClickClass
subMenuClass
titleClass
titleHoverClass
titleRootClass
titleRootHoverClass
titleLabelClass
titleIconClass
itemClass
labelClass
labelHoverClass
labelInitialClass
labelInitialHoverClass
textClass
textHoverClass
iconClass
iconHoverClass
These CSS properties control the way the DDMenu looks. All of them replace the automatically-generated class name assigned to an element with something new of your choice. It is through this mechanism that the look of the menu can be seriously improved.
See the CSS Class Reference for more information about each of these properties.