-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re:[support] menu not appearing expanded From: Metzler, David metzlerd@evergreen.edu To: support@drupal.org Date: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 1:07:56 PM
Yes and no.
Your initial assumption is correct. Primary links and secondary links are completely unrelated structures. Not all themes support the concept of secondary links. Frankly not all themes support the concept of primary links either. The only difference between the a primary link and a normal menu block comes at the theme layer. Most themes disable the expanding/collapsing behaviour of primary links because they want to display it inline (across the page). The expand/collapse model doesn't really hold up because the default css/javascript for this just behavior just doesn't work in a horizontal layout (especially in I.E.).
Primary links and Secondary links when they are supported by a theme, most often only work properly if they are a single simple list (i.e. non-hierarchical). That being said, there are some themes that may be designed to display hierarchical list primary links in a nice fashion. That is completely up to the theme designer.
So if you find a theme that supports secondary links, you'll be able to add a simple list of secondary lists that will probably appear in the site header, in a smaller font than the primary links, perhaps with text decorations turned on. That's just a theme developers choice.
Depending on your theme, you may be able to alter it to actually allow the expanding collapsing behaviour, but if you'd like different expand collapse behaviour, my recommendation would be to create a new region in your theme for the menu item, and add the css that you want to display that region differently. You'll problably end up fighting the base css less by using this strategy, but you'll need to learn enough theming to add the new region.
I hope that clarifies things for you.... Or maybe I've just confused you more :).
Dave
Had I not already figured out how to add blocks (and menus) to custom regions, this might have confused me, but as it is, it makes perfect sense - thanks so much for taking the time to explain it!