Quick Guide

Installation

Installing VirtualTreeNavigator couldn't be simpler. Simply extract the contents of the archive you downloaded and copy them into a folder. VirtualTreeNavigator will use that directory for it's own configuration files and you can place your taxonomy descriptors anywhere else. You can also put the Taxonomy descriptors under source control and share them with your whole development team.

Creating your first taxonomy definition

Go to the Taxonomy Definition Editor tab and start writing your first taxonomy definition, use the tutorial or load any of VirtualTreeNavigator's example definitions. Press Ctrl-F9 or choose Tools -> Parse Taxonomy Definition from the menu to test that your XML and the definition of the taxonomy is valid.
Press F9 or choose Tools -> Build Tree from the menu to create the first level of your tree.
Click on any node of the tree to create its children.

Database Configuration

Before VirtualTreeNavigator can connect to any ADO databases it will ask you for connection credentials. The dialog is simple to use and you can store your connections for retrieval later. The connection credentials are stored encrypted on a file on your disk. Enter the credentials on the left-hand side, "test" and then "add" your connection.

Choose your connection from the right-hand side and connect to the database.

Next steps

Learning how to use VirtualTreeNavigator to its full potential is easy and fun. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can pick up the configuration elements of the XML and create amazing taxonomies using your data. Anything can be represented as a Tree!

Command-line arguments

If you would like to use VTN preconfigured as a read-only application you can supress several features by passing the following command-line arguments.

-novalues, to hide the values tab and show only the HTML tab
-noeditor, to hide the Editor tab
-nolog, to hide the Log tab

The following is the syntax of vtn command-line:

vtn.exe [filename] [-novalues] [-noeditor] [-nolog]