Reviews

Review: ASPxNavigation Suite

• By Mike Gunderloy
• April 30, 2004

ASPxNavigation Suite 1.1
$149.99
Developer Express
Las Vegas, Nevada
(702) 262-0609
www.devexpress.com

This suite offers a pair of controls, ASPxMenu and ASPxNavBar, together with the full C# source code for both. The controls combine design-time support in VS .NET with client-side scripting that supports a good subset of major browsers (IE 4+, Netscape 4+, and Mozilla).

The ASPxMenu control lets you produce menu sections for site navigation with various rollover effects. Menus can be static, or they can pop up when you point at a graphic. You can have submenus that fly out as well. If you'd rather, you can just have straight dropdown menus. Of course, you can adjust things like layout and colors to suit your needs. You also get a templating system that makes for fast and flexible formatting.

The ASPxNavBar lets you create groups of links (or other things, for that matter), surrounded by boxes. The end user can expand, contract, or rearrange the groups right in the browser. It's all very reminiscent of the XP-style sidebars where groups of things open and shut. The groups and items are also available programmatically, so you can change their contents on the fly.

These controls are quite snappy in the browser, and don't appear to vastly increase page size. If you want to play around with the controls, there are live demos linked from the product's home page, or you can download a trial version.