Thanks for the input Chris. Now, please forgive me, it was a late night and I forgot that the properties item is case sensitive, so "Root" does work on all pages and "root" never works on any page. My bad,,,, it really was late.
In answer to your question though, no I wasn't intending to show child links in the Links object. Actually what I did was modify it so I could use it as a secondary horizontal menu. I got frustrated with trying to put two menus on a page that each had different items in them and I didn't want to have to configure differing menus to "get there."
So,,,, what I did was to take the standard Links.ascx.vb file and modify it to require BOTH the "hidden" AND the "disabled" settings to be checked for an item to show up in the menu. I called it "MLINKS" as a skin object so I could still use the core Links object if I needed it.
Now I can use the SolPart menu, DNNMenu, or NavMenu's for the vertical menu, or even a secondary horizontal menu and the MLINKS object for an additional menu AND still am able to designate pages as "hidden" only so they stay hidden.
It allows me to do a bit of creative skinning I was having problems with. And now that I am fully awake and functioning properly,,,, remembering things like case sensitivity on properties set in skin objects,,,, everything is working wonderfully.
Thanks again Chris,
Clay