Fear not, there is reason for this madness! The layout
tag includes information that is displayed in the menu item type list (essentially an
overview). The state tag includes information that is displayed during the creation
of a menu item that uses the layout.
There are occasions when a more detailed description is required when we come to
define a menu item. For example, we may want to warn the user that they must fill in
a specific menu parameter. We will discuss menu parameters in a moment.
If we used the given XML in the default.xml file and we duplicated it in the
alternative.xml file, renaming the layout, 'My Other Layout', the menu item type
list would now appear like this:
Now that we know how to modify the names and descriptions of views and layouts,
we can investigate how to define custom menu parameters.
Customizing the Page
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There are many different types of parameter that we can define. Before you continue,
you might want to familiarize yourself with this list of parameter types because we
will be using them in the examples (a complete description of these parameters is
available in the Appendix):
category
editors
filelist
folderlist
helpsites
hidden
imagelist
languages
list
menu
menuitem
password
radio
section
spacer
sql
text
textarea
timezones
Menu parameters can be considered as being grouped into several categories:
System
Component
State
URL
Advanced
The system parameters are predefined by Joomla! (held in the administrator/
components/com_menus/models/metadata/component.
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