Menu trails operation not clear

Same problem here. Module sounds promising, but I don't see it working as seen in the screenshots. More help and documentation is welcome.

This is still open, and though I'm no menutrails wizard, I should be able to at least point you in the right direction.

First, the "handy snippet" should no longer be necessary under Drupal 6.x. The dev version of the module has a revised README.TXT as explained by eojthebrave here:
http://drupal.org/node/328517#comment-1484966

I've used the official (not dev) version of menutrails with Zen and I didn't need to add anything to my template.php file.

There are two additional issues that seem confusing.

1. Menu Appearing
In the screen shots, the primary menu does not appear on one image and then it appears at the top on the next, along with an expanded sub-menu. The idea here is that you can get the primary menu to appear on pages that are not actually listed as part of the primary menu tree. To do this, you can add items to a menu trail, so that Drupal knows which menu item is their parent, even if they themselves are not explicitly situated in the primary menu tree. So, for example, if you have a menu item "Blog" and you want all your blog postings to appear with the "Blog" item highlighted in the menu, then go to admin/settings/menutrails and under node type, select the document type for blog posts and then identify its parent item as "Blog".

2. Menu Item Highlighted
The way you actually highlight a menu item is by using CSS and editing your theme.css file. The menutrails moodule adds an "active-trail" class to the appropriate li menu item corresponding to your settings above. To make this appear highlighted, you will probably need to edit your css file as explained by karel3s here:
http://drupal.org/node/328517#comment-1477864

Hope this helps.

Phil.

I'm tempted to make this issue "critical" because of how serious a problem the documentation is. There are two major hurdles I had to overcome just to make this module function simply (highlighting a certain link on the menu when a certain node of a particular content type is viewed). Those hurdles were enabling taxonomy and changing my css.

The taxonomy module must be enabled

This is supposed to be fixed, but it currently causes a WSOD on the settings page in the most recent non-dev versions (Drupal 6.15 & Menu Trails 6.x.1.0). There is at least one other ticket open for that issue right now (#564010: Module doesn't check for taxonomy.module).

You must edit the CSS

Reading this particular post was a real D'OH moment for me - realizing that I had to add the "active-trail" class to my CSS file. Of course! That makes perfect sense, but it should be noted in the read me file. This module isn't as easy as install and configure in the settings as the read me would have you believe.

Code snippet no longer needed (minor)

It's also true that the page for this project (http://drupal.org/project/menutrails) still says that a snippet is needed in the template.php. It should specify that in Drupal 6, it is not needed. You wouldn't believe how long I spent looking through all of the files included in the download looking for that snippet!

Guys I'm really scratching my head over this one. I tried the suggestions mention here but for some strange reason I still can't get it to work. I'm the using the latest dev version with D6.15.

One thing I notice is that the menu items being displayed in the drop down menu are not all complete. I mean I have 8 Primary Menu items but only 3 are being shown. Nonetheless, I still tried with whats available but the active trail is still not showing (Yes, I added the active trail class.).

@evilgenius:
You might want to start a new support issue for this question and provide more specifics to your case, since this thread is purportedly about documentation, not about why menu trails isn't working in your specific case.

Having said that, I would say that if you are having other problems with your menu (like only 3 of your items being shown), then this most certainly will make it difficult to sort out problems with menu trails. I would double-check that the pages referred to in your menu are "published". If not, then they won't show up in the menu. Also, make sure that permissions are set correctly for the content type of that menu item so that anonymous users can view that content.

Lastly, issues relating to CSS and the appearance of active trails are probably easier for others to resolve if they can see a sample page. That way, someone who knows what to look for can tell whether or not the menu trails class is being properly applied -- and that is the first step in figuring out whether your problem comes from the configuration of menu trails, or the coding of your CSS file(s).

(And hey, did I mention that I'm no menu trails guru? I may not be able to help even if you supply more details.)

Phil.

Why the hell isn't the instructions about adding the li "active-trail" CSS class to your theme style mentioned in the README.txt ?

Are you serious?? That's the whole point of having a README file!

ADD IT IN ALREADY.

Add this:

"The way you actually highlight a menu item is by using CSS and editing your theme.css file. The menutrails moodule adds an "active-trail" class to the appropriate li menu item corresponding to your settings above. To make this appear highlighted, you will probably need to edit your css file as explained by karel3s here:
http://drupal.org/node/328517#comment-1477864"