Question

I’ve created a layout with all the styling etc. I have a menu and sub menu here, also a 3 column layout for content.

The left column will be used as a filter for reports most of the time, center for main content and the right column for help tips depending on the view you’re at.

Can I define what the links in the sub menu are?

What is populated in the Left and Right columns, depending on the current view?

Answer 1

If you’re looking to add new content in those areas, you want to be looking at sections.

You can see an example of this in the default project, just do a file-new-project to check out the layout page. You’ll want something like this in your layout:

@RenderSection("SideBar", false)

The false here lets you opt-out of putting sidebar content on a view.

Your view would then have something like this:

@section SideBar {
   // your sidebar stuff
}  

As always, the Gu knows best: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2010/12/30/asp-net-mvc-3-layouts-and-sections-with-razor.aspx

Cheers.