Book-Style Navigation Block

If you have a container and category dedicated to book pages, you can simply create a menu at ../admin/menu and move all the relevant category and cotainer links to that menu and you have your block. Be aware, though, that this will probably break the prev|up|next navigation or the breadcrumb trail- I am not sure which.

Alternative, see if this tutorial gives you what you want:
category.greenash.net.au/multiple_root_menus

that should be http://category.greenash.net.au/multiple_root_menus

I am not sure how to dedicate a category to book pages... i was under the impression that i would no longer need to use any book pages because category replaces such a need.

You're right, I forgot that.

Hello,

I've wrote a category_block module, which should give what you are asking for. A tar.gz of the module attached.

The module doesn't only give navigation blocks for categories, but tries to solve the problem of the block visibility scope while browsing a category or even a node that is classified under a category (e.g. a node that is not a category nor a container).

I'm very open for crits and suggestions for improvements.

Needless to say, this module is considered to be in early development.

The installation file (category_block.install) doesn't work because it has two typos: 'module_exists' should be 'module_exist' (lines 3 and 6), and 'category_displau' should be 'category_display' (line 6).

Thanks for the initiative to port the book-navigation block to category!

When I'm trying to create a block, I get this:
user warning: Unknown column 'visiblity_control' in 'field list' query: INSERT INTO sygyt_category_block (bid, cid, name, description, depth, visiblity_control) VALUES (2, 34, 'Documentation block', 'Doc_block', 0, 0) in mydrupaldir\includes\database.mysql.inc on line 120.

I guess the installer didn't quite create the correct table.

oh, Thanks for pointing that out :-) an updated roll is on the way..

Alright, fixed both issues, and some other typos on the way.
Attached new release..

You will need to do:
DELETE FROM system WHERE name = 'category_block';
DROP TABLE category_block;

Then re-enable the module, in order for the .install to get in action :-).

I wanted to point out that there are some disadvantages to using the snippet referenced above. It simply prints the category navigation tree for a given branch of the tree, using the settings for that container or category. The problem I had with this is that when used to print navigation, the branches/leaves of the navigation tree don't open and collapse as you move through the tree the way the menu does.

I wanted to be able to use different (longer) names in the sidebar navigation than what was showen in the menu, but ended up not being able to do this.

So ... for now, my solution to get navigation working my pages is using path_auto to get nicely constructed urls and I build a custom block for each section of the site which displays a branch of the main site menu. My "Primary Links" menu contains links to all pages in the site, which allows it to generate the Primary and Secondary links, while it can also be used for the section navigation by calling the specific branch of the menu.

Best of both worlds

Another related problem I've been having is that the Category module renames my menu items when the pages are updated. ie. I have a page called "Advocate Training Program", which I want to call ATP in the menu, but if I edit the page, Category module renames the menu item. Here's some features I'd like to see:

• maintain menu item name seperately from page title
• branch the menu according to current location (like menu lists)
• display node count (like Category TOC)
• toggle display node count (like Category TOC)

I wanted to be able to use different (longer) names in the sidebar navigation than what was showen in the menu, but ended up not being able to do this.

Go to ..admin/menu, click on the edit link of the categories/containers you want to give a different name, change the name and save the changes. Your navigation menu will now have the new names, but your container and categories will have their original names.

Do be aware that if you edit the container, you will lose these changes and need to make them again.

Next week I will try updating my module that I posted above to have solutions for the problems you posted. So expect another release soon ;-).