# Two level Navigational menus **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [March 28, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/two-level-navigational-menus/164160 "2009-03-28T23:32:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/two-level-navigational-menus/164160/1 "2009-03-28T23:32:11Z")
This has turned out to be a bit more difficult than I anticipated. I thought that creating two levels of generic navigational menus should not be that difficult. May be I am missing something. I have done it by borrowing code from various sources and modifying it. Still, the code is not clean and I don’t like what I have. The complication comes from keeping the parent tabs selected when the child tabs are clicked on and then links, e.g., show, edit, destroy are clicked on the forms that are displayed. Another complication comes from having first level menu forms that have links that use display forms from other menu choices. I did a lot of research on github for available sources/plugins and found a few but either they are single level menus which do not maintain the parent/child relationships between two level menus or if they do, make it a rocket science (at least for me). I am looking for something simple like Tim H.'s role\_requirements plugin which is very easy to understand, does the job, and is a joy to read his code and learn from it. I have looked at the following on github: Navigation Helper - Of all, I like the API and code the best for this plugin, but it does not have support of nested menus: Here is the link on github: > **[GitHub - rpheath/navigation\_helper: Rails plugin: provides automatic navigation...](https://github.com/rpheath/navigation_helper/tree/master)** > > master Symantic-Menu - This has everything I need, but unfortunately does not work. I sent a query to the author who has not responded. Here is the link on github: > **[GitHub - danielharan/semantic-menu: A plugin to make rails menus easier to write](https://github.com/danielharan/semantic-menu/tree/master)** > > master Easy Navigation - Again meets the requirements, but I found it hard to understand. The author does not have tests for this plugin. Here is the link on github: [http://github.com/innetra/easy\_navigation/tree/master](http://github.com/innetra/easy_navigation/tree/master) Rails Widgets - this is a rather comprehensive set of UI components one of which is TabNav. I did something similar for my implementation which has not turned out to be clean as I mention above. Therefore I am reluctant to dive into it and invest a lot of time in it. Here is the link on github: [http://wiki.github.com/paolodona/rails-widgets/tabnav](http://wiki.github.com/paolodona/rails-widgets/tabnav) I would appreciate it if someone can point me to a rather simple and clean implementation of tabbed menu navigation. For my requirements, a two level deep menus would suffice. It should have the flexibility to specify the current tab to be hi-lighted and specifying the classes for the CSS styling. Also, if someone has successfully used one of the aforementioned plugins and can share sample code that would be nice too. Sorry for the long post and thanks for your time. Bharat ---
**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 8:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/two-level-navigational-menus/164160/2 "2009-03-30T20:04:24Z")
Why are you expecting a rails plugin to provide an xhtml navigation menu? Why not just implement the drop down menu using simply xhtml (lists) and css? Try this: > **[Droplet Web Plugin](https://www.lwis.net/droplet/)** > > A CSS and JavaScript driven info browser for your website Specifically: > **[Droplet Web Plugin](https://www.lwis.net/droplet/)** > > A CSS and JavaScript driven info browser for your website If you want to get fancy (and you use jQuery), try this: [http://users.tpg.com.au/j\_birch/plugins/superfish/](http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/) Specifically: [http://users.tpg.com.au/j\_birch/plugins/superfish/#sample4](http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/#sample4) HTH. On Mar 28, 5:32 pm, Bharat R. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) ---
**Author:** ![bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/e47774/32.png) [@bruparel](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bruparel)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2009, 5:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/two-level-navigational-menus/164160/3 "2009-05-12T17:10:56Z")
I am using jQuery now and am interested in using Superfish. Can you point me to a working example of Superfish and RoR integration? Thanks. Bharat