Link Icons
Link Icons are used for navigation. They indicate the currently selected view with the primary color. Use them carefully, there is a high risk of bloating the UI with many Link Icons. Used wrong, results in a cluttery UI, hard to navigate in. Consider breaking up your folders into sub folders to divide the system instead of adding many Link Icons.
Tip
It is strongly encouraged to have the least possible amount of top level Link Icons and instead work with tabs and list items. Try to think about the top level Link Icons as Which function it is. History, status, 2D animation view, documentation or other. By doing this, it keeps the UI clean and the project is prepared for better integration with new functionality or auto generated Link Icons.
Sticky routes
By setting UsePreviousRoute
to Yes
(default value), a number of rules kicks in to help selecting the same Link Icon on next folder navigation.
When user navigates to another folder, either by clicking in the tree, or by navigating through the OpenLink click action from another widget/button, the following rules are applied in below order when the new folder is entered:
- If the Name
attribute of the Link Icon matches with the old one, that one is chosen.
- If the Group
attribute of the Link Icon matches, that one is chosen.
- If the folder has a Default route
Link Icon set, that one is chosen.
- If none of the above rules matches, the first Link Icon in list is chosen.
Link Icon types
Via the attribute LinkType
the Link Icon can be set to appear as a usual menu, a tab below a Link Icon, or a list below a tab or a menu. The intention is to group functionality into one single top level Link Icon, instead of having many top level Link Icons.
As soon as a Link Icon has child Link Icons, it loses its ability to show content. Instead it transforms into a routing Link Icon.
LinkType menu
When a menu LinkType
LinkIcon
is configured as a child to a top level LinkIcon
,
the top level Link Icon loses its functionality, and transforms into a popup menu icon. Clicking on top level Link Icons expands/collapses the popup menu with the child Link Icons in it. One level of popup Link Icons is allowed.
Warning
Using popup menus this way is deprecated. Use top level Link Icons for function select, followed by Tabs and lists instead.
LinkType tab
The Link Icon is displayed as a tab, with icon and title.
LinkType list
The Link Icon is displayed as a list item with icon and title next to the current view.
Link Icon groups
In complex configurations it can be hard to route to the same function. An example of this is when many Link Icons in the same file describe the same function, such as a list with functionality used below each tab below a top level Link Icon.
This is where the Group
attribute is very handy.
When the names differ, the group name is the same and the "best" Link Icon is selected when switching tabs or folder.