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Differences in Side Bar and Explorer Bar Views

  • 2 minutes to read

A NavBar control provides a number of Views which define the appearance and arrangement of NavBar groups and links. All Views can be divided into two main categories: Side Bar Views and Explorer Bar Views. The main differences between them are listed as follows:

Side Bar Views display the contents of a single group at a time. This is the active group and can be accessed via the ActiveGroup property. Other groups are collapsed and represented only by their group buttons on the opposite sides of the control. Clicking a group button activates the corresponding group (displays its contents) and collapses the previously active group.

Explorer Bar Views are capable of displaying the contents of all groups at once. You can collapse/expand individual groups by a single click on the group header. The expanded status of a group is specified by its OptionsExpansion.Expanded property.

Side Bar Views support the icon layout. When this layout is applied to a NavBar group, only link images (no captions) are displayed, and links are arranged across, and then down. You can apply the icon layout by setting the group’s ShowAsIconView property to True.

Explorer Bar Views do not support the icon layout: a link is represented by a combination of its image and caption. Links are arranged from the top to the bottom.

The group header in a Side Bar View is a simple button displaying the group’s caption.

In addition to the group caption, group headers in Explorer Bar Views also display images associated with the group and the group header sign.