What is the best menu for an ASP.Net application?

Question

What do you find to provide the best menu for an ASP.Net 2.0 - 3.5 web application? Suggestions do not have to particularly be ASP.Net controls, but could be other menu's that work well within an ASP.Net web application.

I would like for the suggestions to be options that do not require purchasing or royalty fees. OpenSource suggestions would be even better.

Answer 1

I've found that the most flexible is to use CSS to style an unordered list like this:

<div id="nav_main" >
<ul>
  <li id="current">Button 1</li>
  <li><a href="#">Button 2</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Button 3</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Button 4</a></li>
  <li><a href="#">Button 5</a></li>
</ul>
</div> 

You'll find many CSS ways to style this kind of list with hover background images, etc.

Now if you are using Webforms and you want to use your sitemap, then I would suggest using a Repeater and NOT use the menu control. You will have the most control of your generating your list this way.

Similarly, if you are using ASP.NET MVC, you can do a foreach on your sitemap to create your list.

This of course is just for simple menus, but it can be expanded to include more complicated menus. I've found the following CSS-styled menu to be very good: http://www.lwis.net/free-css-drop-down-menu/