Adding navigation to topics

In HTML5 output, you can set a parameter to include table-of-contents navigation in the <nav> element of each page. The navigation can be rendered in a sidebar or menu via CSS.

Earlier versions of DITA-OT used the TocJS transformation to render a JavaScript-based table of contents in an XHTML frameset for topic navigation. Recent toolkit versions provide a modern HTML5 navigation alternative.

As of DITA-OT 2.2, the nav-toc parameter can be used in HTML5 transformations to embed navigation directly in topics using native HTML5 elements without JavaScript or framesets.

1. Set the nav-toc parameter to one of the following options:

   • The partial option creates a table of contents with the portion of the navigation hierarchy that contains the current topic (along with its parents, siblings and children).
   • The full option embeds the complete navigation for the entire map in each topic.

2. Add custom CSS rules to style the navigation.

   For example, the DITA-OT documentation stylesheet includes the following rules to place the table of contents on the left side of the browser viewport and highlight the current topic in bold:

   /* Style ToC nav as sidebar on desktop */
   @media screen and (min-width: 992px) {
     nav.toc {
       float: left;
       width: 300px;
     }
   }
   
   nav.toc li.active > a {
     font-weight: var(--font-weight-bold);
   }
   

Tip: For an example of HTML output generated using this method, see the HTML5 version of the DITA-OT documentation included in the installation folder under doc/index.html.