I am rendering the top-level elements of a Zend Navigation object in one place like this:
echo $this->navigation()->menu()->setMaxDepth(0);
<
I do something similar. My main navigation is handled with something like this...
$this->navigation()->menu()->setPartial('tabs.phtml');
echo $this->navigation()->menu()->render();
Then in my tabs.phtml I iterate over the container like so...
if (count($this->container)) {
foreach($this->container as $page) {
if ($page->isVisible()) {
if ($page->isActive(true)) {
$subcontainer = $page->getPages();
foreach($subcontainer as $subpage) {
// echo my link
}
}
}
}
}
I hope that helps a bit.