Tutorial 4.A. - Add the Show Submenu Action
Home » Resources » DSA Tutorials » Tutorial #4: Author the Chapters submenu » Tutorial 4.A. - Add the Show Submenu Action
 

Tutorial 4.A. - Add the Show Submenu Action

 
What you will learn in this section:

  • How to use the show submenu action
To begin, we need to make the chapters submenu appear when the viewer clicks the “Chapters” button on the main menu. To do this, we will use an Action.

  1. Click the checkbox next to the Chapters submenu in your menu elements tree to make it visible in the Layout Preview window.
  2. Expand the menu elements view for the Chapters submenu using the grey arrow so that you can see the two Sets in the menu block. The sets are called “Chapters 1-5 Set” and “Chapter 6-10 Set “. You can see that each set contains 5 buttons.
  3. The Chapters submenu is laid out horizontally so apply remote control navigation by right clicking the “Chapters 1-5 Set” and selecting “Apply Horizontal Navigation” using the context menu. Do the same for the “Chapters 6-10″ set.
  4. Expand the menu elements view for the button called “MM Chapters” in the Main Menu using the grey arrow. You will see 5 nodes for the 5 remote control actions that can occur for that button: Enter Key, Up Key, Down Key, Left Key and Right Key.
  5. Click the Enter Key event to show the Action Editor window in the Control Panel.
  6. Right-Click in the Action Editor Window to display the Actions list, select Menu Actions > Menu Actions > Show Submenu Block. The Show Submenu Block action will appear in the Actions list.

The Show Submenu Block Action has three parameters to set.

  1. Choose the Chapters submenu from the “Submenu Block Name” pulldown list.
  2. Choose “Chapters 1-5 Set” from the “Set Name” pulldown list.
  3. Choose the button called “Chapter 1″ from the Button Focus pulldown list.
Show me:

Quick Compile and review your project using the softplayer.

By adding this action and setting the parameters you will be able to navigate to the Chapters submenu by clicking the “Chapters” button on the main menu. When the chapters submenu appears on screen, you will be able to navigate left and right from the Chapter 1 button to the Chapter 5 button. Notice that when you arrow right from the Chapter 5 button the highlight shifts back to the Chapter 1 button and likewise arrowing left from the Chapter 1 button takes you back to the chapter 5 button.

To access chapter buttons 6-10 we need to author navigation to the 2nd set in the Chapters submenu block. We will do that in the next tutorial.