Changes to menus between Builder 1.6 and 2.0

In Builder 1.6 and earlier, menus were defined as simple unordered lists like the one shown below:

* [Home]
* ----
* [Tutorials]
** [Working with menus]
** [Changes between 1.6 and 2.0|Changes to menus between Builder 1.6 and 2.0]

That notation would produce a menu something like the following if placed on a normal page within your space:

• [Home]

• ---

• [Tutorials]
  • [Working with menus]
  • [Changes between 1.6 and 2.0]

And if placed in the "Custom pre-menu" or "Custom post-menu" sections of the Builder theme version 1.5-1.6 it would create a menubar at the top of the screen like this:

Now, in Builder 2.0 you can still use the simple unordered list notation, however it must be wrapped in the menubar macro and wikimenu macro as shown below:

{menubar}
{wikimenu}
* [Home]
* ----
* [Tutorials]
** [Working with menus]
** [Changes between 1.6 and 2.0|Changes to menus between Builder 1.6 and 2.0]
{wikimenu}
{menubar}

The menubar macro turns an unordered (bullet) list of links in to a functional menu. The wikimenu macro processes a normal Confluence wiki notation unordered list to ensure it's in the correct format for processing by the menubar macro.

The neat thing about this is that you can now put the menu anywhere - for example, you put it in a sidebar, the footer or even on a page in your space (as we have done in our example above), etc.

While the wiki notation is often really easy to work with, there are some downsides - most notably when a user does not have access to the item you are linking to which results in a "dead" (non-clickable) menu item. As such, we highly recommend using the menu macro and menuitem macro to encapsulate your links like this:

{menubar}
 {menuitem}[Home]{menuitem}
 {menuseparator}
 {menu}[Tutorials]
  {menuitem}[Working with menus]{menuitem}
  {menuitem}[Changes between 1.6 and 2.0|Changes to menus between Builder 1.6 and 2.0]{menuitem}
 {menu}
{menubar}

Note: We've indented the items above to make it easier to see the hierarchical structure of the menu - this has no effect on the actual menu, so it's optional, but we highly recommend it as it makes your menu notation easier to work with.

The menuitem macro replaces the *'s in the wiki notation and to indent the list (create a submenu) the menu macro is used (and for subsequent indentation levels the submenu macro and sub-submenu macro are used).