Introduction

how does a .plist for the navigation look like?

(
	{
		name = Root;
		children = ("First Level Item");
	},
        {
		name = "First Level Item";
		pageName = "FirstPage";

		children = ("Second Level Item");

		height = 19;
		width = 90;
	},
        {
		name = "Second Level Item";
		displayName = "^session.secondLevelDisplayName";
                action = "session.createSomething";

		height = 19;
		width = 90;
	}
)

what do I do with it?
You create a page wrapper like:

.html: 
	<webobject name="Navigation"/><webobject name="Content"/>
.wod: 
	Navigation: ERXNavigationMenu {context = myContext;}
	Content: WOComponentContent {}
.java:
	...
    public NSKeyValueCoding navigationContext() {
        NSKeyValueCoding context = (NSKeyValueCoding)session().objectForKey("navigationContext");
        
        if (context().page() instanceof D2WPage) {
            context = ((D2WPage)context().page()).d2wContext();
        }
		return context;
	}

The important thing is that if you provide a context, then the context needs to be able to find out the current state. So, in the case of a D2WContext you would check if the pageConfigiration is a given value and return the "path" to this "page" in the rules. If you don't give a context, then you need to set the state explicitely: given the example above, you need to write:

public Session ...
	public WOComponent createSomething() {
		ERXNavigationManager.manager().navigationStateForSession(session()).setState(new NSArray(new Object[] {
			"First Level Item",
			"Second Level Item"
		}));
		... do real action...
	}
...