Struts Menu / News: Recent posts

Struts Menu is a web menuing framework for JSP and Struts based applications. Menus can be defined in an XML file and displayed through the use of JSP tags. Support for dynamic javascript menus is included. This release is primarily a bug-fix release.

Change Log: http://struts-menu.sourceforge.net/changes-report.html:

A complete CVS changelog can be found at:
http://struts-menu.sourceforge.net/changelog-report.html ... read more

Struts Menu is a web menuing framework for JSP and Struts based applications. Menus can be defined in an XML file and displayed through the use of JSP tags. Support for dynamic javascript menus is included. This release's major feature is the complete de-coupling from Struts - so that no struts.jar is required in the classpath anymore. Of course, if you have it in there, it's used as before. This release was primarily motivated by my need to include this in the WebWork version of AppFuse. In addition, I fixed a lot of bugs that I never even realized were entered. I'm monitoring the tracker's now - hopefully the delay won't happen again. ... read more

New features in this release include a EL tag that allows JSTL's EL expressions in all attributes, as well as the ability to use Struts Menu outside of a Struts application. I also took the time to add a database-driven example to the sample app.

From http://struts-menu.sourceforge.net/changes-report.html:

- Added support for plain ol' ResourceBundles and JSTL's Resource
Bundle. The EL tag defaults to JSTL's ResourceBundle if no "bundle"
attribute is specified, and to Struts' MessageResources if that's not found.
The regular tag defaults to Struts' MessageResources if no bundle is
specified. All bad bundle attributes result in a log.error() rather than a
JspException.... read more

This release is primarily a bug-fixing release, but I also added a couple of enhancement. The first is
the variable substitution now uses JSTL, which means two things.

1. You must use a JSP 1.2 container and include the standard tag library in your project for this to work.
2. You can now use "dot" notation in your variables. For example, ${user.name} will now work.

Other enhancements include added support for standalone menus in the Explandable List Menu (no items, just a <Menu>) and highlighting of the last menu clicked. ... read more

This release is a significant refactoring of the 1.x codebase. The source and site is now built using Maven. Menus can now be defined using Velocity
templates and support has been added for looking up dynamic values. This means that if you have ${variableName} in your menu-config.xml (in a link), the tag library will look in all scopes for a variable with the name "variableName". The example app has been updated to improve documentation.... read more

This release includes the addition of a tabbed menu displayer, the ability to specify global forwards in the menu configuration, role names are delimited by comma rather than spaces, and miscellaneous bug fixes. Thanks again to Matt Raible for his contributions that made this release worthwhile.

This release contains some general updates and new features. Most notably, there is a new CoolMenus version 4 compatible menu displayer, a role based permissions adapter and the ability to specifiy which menus are assigned to what role in the menu-config.xml, and also update to Struts 1.1b3 compatibility.

Thanks to Matt Raible for contributing most of these updates.

Look for new releases soon.

1.1 is being released to make way for work on 2.0. A significant package reorg and renaming is planned as well as the addition of new features. StrutsMenu will be moving to a more incremental release schedule. You will probably never see another alpha, beta, etc. again. Releases will now occur like 2.0.0, 2.0.1, etc. and more frequently (if I find enough time to work on it :-p).

This release includes an initial implementation of a permissions checking framework. At this point, menu disabling based on permissions is only being done by the CoolMenus displayer. An example is included. Also, the DropDown menu displayer has been updated so that it now works correctly with Netscape 6.x and Mozilla. I'll be placing a feature freeze and pushing out a 1.1 final very soon. I will probably be switching to a more incremental release strategy next. Watch for updates.

1.1 Beta release updated to account for changes to the PlugIn interface in Struts. This release should now be compatible with the latest nightly build of Struts.
I did not create a new release because this change is very minimal, but I did want to make sure that people have this critical change.
An upcomming beta2 release will probably include an initial permissions checking mechanism.

Web menuing framework for JSP and Struts based applications. Menus can be defined in an XML file and displayed through the use of JSP tags. Support for dynamic javascript menus is included.

1.1 Beta released. This release includes the CoolMenus3 displayer and related examples.

A new menu displayer has been added for displaying CoolMenus3 menus. CoolMenus is a great and robust javascript menuing library. And it's free! Check out the website: www.dhtmlcentral.com.

Updates for StrutsMenu are in the works. Some of the new features will include horizontal and vertical popup menus, better browser support, ability to disable menu items, a PlugIn component for Struts 1.1, and more. The new version will have signifcant changes to the underlying code. Betas will be released soon.