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Adding a Menu Item
5:11We have our new page now, but our website users don't have a way to easily browse to it. Let's learn how to update our menu in order to fix that problem.
Okay.
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We need to add a new item to our menu.
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So users have a way to browse
to our new links page.
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Let's explore our project and
see if we can figure out how to do that.
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First off, let's run our website and take
a closer look at the HTML for our menu.
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I prefer Chrome's developer tools.
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So I'm going to change my selected
browser to Google Chrome.
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And press the play button or the F5
function key to start running our website.
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To see the markup for our menu, let's
right-click on the Contact menu item and
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select Inspect in Chrome's pop-up menu.
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Notice that as we hover our mouse
over markup in the elements window.
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Chrome will highlight that
element in the browser.
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Here's the line item for
the about menu item.
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And the line item for the home menu item.
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We can also click the little gray
triangle to the left of the HTML tag
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to see the content inside that item.
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Moving up a bit, here's the UL tag for
our menu's line items.
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We want to add a new item
to this unordered list.
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So let's search our project for
the file that contains this tag.
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To make sure that I'm
finding the correct UL tag.
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I'm going to use the entire element
including the class attribute for
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my search criteria.
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Let's right-click on the element
then select Copy > Copy Element.
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Let's switch back to Visual Studio and
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stop our website by
clicking the stop button.
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Next we'll open the find and replace
dialog by clicking on the Edit+Find and
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Replace find in files menu item.
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You'll be using this dialog often.
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So it's helpful to learn
the keyboard shortcut for
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the find in files command
which is Ctrl+Shift+F.
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Notice that Visual Studio automatically
filled in the find what field
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with the HTML element that
we copied to the clipboard.
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If that didn't happen for you.
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Just place your cursor in this field and
press Ctrl+V to paste.
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We want to search across
every file in our website.
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So make sure that the look in
field is set to entire solution.
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Then click the Find All button.
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This will open a panel here at the bottom
of our environment named Find Results 1.
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Let's collapse
the Solution Explorer panel.
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So that we can see more of the results.
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We can see that one matching line was
found and that 40 files were searched.
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The full path of the file is displayed
along with a snippet of the match in line.
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If we double click the search result,
Visual Studio will open
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the _layout.cs HTML file and
take us to the match in line.
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Ha.
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Looks like we found the markup and
code for our menu.
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Let's take a closer look at
the contents of the last tag.
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This doesn't look like HTML, does it?
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It's actually C#.
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But, what's this at symbol?
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As mentioned in an earlier video.
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The at symbol is part of
a special syntax called Razor.
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That allows us to mix C#
with our HTML mark up.
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Typing an at symbol tells the editor
that we want to switch to using C#.
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Notice that we don't have to tell
Razor where the C# code ends.
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Razor is intelligent enough to detect when
we have transitioned back to using HTML.
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Pretty cool?
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We haven't covered how the HTML
action link method works.
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But that's okay.
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From the name of the method.
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It sounds like it will create a link,
which would make sense given our context.
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Let's go ahead and
copy one of the existing menu line items.
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And see if we can make it work.
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I'm gonna put my cursor at the beginning
of the line that contains the last
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li element.
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Press Ctrl+C to copy the line and
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Ctrl+V to paste the line just below
the line that I'm currently on.
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Now that we have our new line item.
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Let's update the call to
the action link method.
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If we hover our mouse pointer
over the action link method name.
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Visual Studio will display a tool tip
containing information about the method
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including the parameter list.
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We can see that the first
parameter is the link text.
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The second is the action name.
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And the third is the controller name.
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For our links page,
let's use Links for the link text.
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Index for the action name.
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And Links again for the controller name.
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Let's save by pressing Ctrl+S and
then F5 to run the website.
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Look at that.
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Here's our Links menu item.
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If we click on it.
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We should see our Links page.
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Great job.
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Now we have a way for
users to discover and view our Links page.
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Knowing how to use the tools
in your toolbox to explore and
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make changes to your website
is a critical developer skill.
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Inspecting, searching for, and
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modifying code is something that
you'll do over and over again.
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So take the necessary time to practice and
master that process.
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We also got to use the developer
tools built into the Chrome browser.
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We're just scratching the surface
of what these tools can do.
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To learn more about what's possible,
check the teacher's notes for
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links to additional resources.
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Next let's wrap up work on our project
by updating our website's content.
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