searching persistance pays off

[Richard]

http://www.4thorder.us/Scripts/Scripts/JS.MDME/

Where zillions of other hierarchial style menus fail, this one beats them to
shame.
The author put a lot of thought behind this and made it extra simple for a
user to change the look and feel.
Where most tree style menus expand one level, leaving other parents open,
this one can do either with a simple value change, from no to yes.
Which is one of my requirements.
So that if one had a short list of parents, and zillions of children, the
entire list would not always be shown.
Say with two parents open.
Since this is a multilevel menu, I can now impliment my submenus so that
only one group of thumbnails show as I want.
So I believe I will use this menu rather than others.
The only drawback is, with javascript off, nothing is shown.
So poor little stevie won't be making nasty comments about it.

 

[Hywel Jenkins]

http://www.4thorder.us/Scripts/Scripts/JS.MDME/

Where zillions of other hierarchial style menus fail, this one beats them to
shame.
The author put a lot of thought behind this and made it extra simple for a
user to change the look and feel.
Where most tree style menus expand one level, leaving other parents open,
this one can do either with a simple value change, from no to yes.
Which is one of my requirements.
So that if one had a short list of parents, and zillions of children, the
entire list would not always be shown.
Say with two parents open.
Since this is a multilevel menu, I can now impliment my submenus so that
only one group of thumbnails show as I want.
So I believe I will use this menu rather than others.
The only drawback is, with javascript off, nothing is shown.
So poor little stevie won't be making nasty comments about it.

No matter how good the source, you'll still screw it up.

 

[Barbara de Zoete]

http://www.4thorder.us/Scripts/Scripts/JS.MDME/

Where zillions of other hierarchial style menus fail, this one beats them to
shame.
The only drawback is, with javascript off, nothing is shown.
So poor little stevie won't be making nasty comments about it.

Lucky for all the www, not only 'stevie' will have nothing to do with it, it's
also 'visitors' like Google that cannot work around a menu like that, because
they too have no javascript abilities. Please do use this technique as it will
keep your site from getting indexed.


--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

 

[Michael Winter]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:08:47 +0100, Barbara de Zoete

[snip]

[...] Google [...] cannot work around a menu like that, because they too
have no javascript abilities. Please do use this technique as it will
keep your site from getting indexed.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with the technique as long as it's
implemented properly. In the majority of cases, menus of all kinds are
written purely in Javascript making them unusable in some cases. However
in this case, the script manipulates mark-up - the proper approach.

Whilst the menu won't be shown in the same way with Javascript, it will
still exist. Unfortunately, the author has (stupidly) placed a DIV element
*over* the list in the demos; only the script, or disabling CSS, will
allow the menu to be shown. As long as you don't emulate that part, it
should be usable for everyone.

Mike

 

[Duende]

While sitting in a puddle Barbara de Zoete scribbled in the mud:

Please do use this technique as it will
keep your site from getting indexed.

Would you really want his site indexed?

 

[Barbara de Zoete]

[snip]

[...] Google [...] cannot work around a menu like that, because they too have
no javascript abilities. Please do use this technique as it will keep your
site from getting indexed.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with the technique as long as it's
implemented properly.

Unfortunately, the author has (stupidly) placed a DIV element *over* the list
in the demos; only the script, or disabling CSS, will allow the menu to be
shown. As long as you don't emulate that part, it should be usable for
everyone.

Shhh, you don't want to inform RtS on this.


--
,-- --<--@ -- PretLetters: 'woest wyf', met vele interesses: ----------.
| weblog | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/_private/weblog.html |
| webontwerp | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/webontwerp.html |
|zweefvliegen | http://home.wanadoo.nl/b.de.zoete/html/vliegen.html |
`-------------------------------------------------- --<--@ ------------'

 

[Steve Pugh]

So poor little stevie won't be making nasty comments about it.

Is that meant to be me?

I'm not poor, I'm not little and you can call me Steve, Stephen or Mr
Pugh but not "stevie".

I'm sure that however good or bad the script is (and let's face it,
you don't have the skills to judge) you'll manage to **** it up
somehow.

Steve

 

[nice.guy.nige]

While the city slept, Richard ([email protected]) feverishly typed...

[RtS has found a new javascript menu]

The only drawback is, with javascript off, nothing is shown.

Oh great. So you want to isolate the (approx) 15% of web visitors who don't
have Javascript enabled or even available to them from your site? Not to
mention Google, et al...

The big trick is ........ don't use client-side javascript for navigation!
But you are far too silly to understand that...

Cheers,
Nige

 

[Richard]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 23:08:47 +0100, Barbara de Zoete

[snip]

[...] Google [...] cannot work around a menu like that, because they
too
have no javascript abilities. Please do use this technique as it will
keep your site from getting indexed.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with the technique as long as it's
implemented properly. In the majority of cases, menus of all kinds are
written purely in Javascript making them unusable in some cases.
However
in this case, the script manipulates mark-up - the proper approach.

Whilst the menu won't be shown in the same way with Javascript, it will
still exist. Unfortunately, the author has (stupidly) placed a DIV
element
*over* the list in the demos; only the script, or disabling CSS, will
allow the menu to be shown. As long as you don't emulate that part, it
should be usable for everyone.

Guess what? I apparently found that little boo boo and the menu shows fully
expanded with javascript turned off.
As I was first testing it, with JS turned off in firefox, no menu.
Going back over things to figure out where I screwed up at, it all of a
sudden works fine.
There was something odd in the very first "menu level 1" section that
screwed it up.
As I had not touched any other section.

 

[Richard]

Is that meant to be me?

I'm not poor, I'm not little and you can call me Steve, Stephen or Mr
Pugh but not "stevie".

I'm sure that however good or bad the script is (and let's face it,
you don't have the skills to judge) you'll manage to **** it up
somehow.

Ah contrar' mon ami. Before I read these replies, I found that little boo
boo and now even YOU, with your turned off javascript, will be able to see
the thing.
Since it is nothing more than a manipulation of <ul>, without JS, it just
shows as a normal html layout.

 

[ghoul]

Ah contrar' mon ami. Before I read these replies, I found that little boo
boo and now even YOU, with your turned off javascript, will be able to see
the thing.
Since it is nothing more than a manipulation of <ul>, without JS, it just
shows as a normal html layout.

actually it's au contraire, Stupid, Richard the

 

[Richard]

While the city slept, Richard ([email protected]) feverishly typed...

[RtS has found a new javascript menu]

The only drawback is, with javascript off, nothing is shown.

Oh great. So you want to isolate the (approx) 15% of web visitors who
don't
have Javascript enabled or even available to them from your site? Not
to
mention Google, et al...

The big trick is ........ don't use client-side javascript for
navigation!
But you are far too silly to understand that...

Makes no difference with this script.
Being a simple list, it just shows fully expanded with no JS.

 

[Toby Inkster]

http://www.4thorder.us/Scripts/Scripts/JS.MDME/

Not particularly great. Doesn't work in Opera 7.5x. The DevEdge one was
better.

 

[Steve Pugh]

Ah contrar' mon ami.

Your skill with human languages matches your skill with computer
languages. And I'm not your friend.

Before I read these replies, I found that little boo boo

What little boo boo?

and now even YOU, with your turned off javascript, will be able to see
the thing.

I wasn't the one with JS switched off. I was the one who had it
switched on and saw overlapping text with your previous version.
Looking at some of the demos of this new toy I'm the one who sees the
level one links jumping from left to right as the mouse moves over an
open level two link.

Since it is nothing more than a manipulation of <ul>, without JS, it just
shows as a normal html layout.

That's all well and good and is where the rest of us would have
started, not where we would have arrived after months of faffing
around. You'll just find a new way to screw it up. You always do.

Steve

 

[Bernhard Sturm]

http://www.4thorder.us/Scripts/Scripts/JS.MDME/

Where zillions of other hierarchial style menus fail, this one beats them to
shame.

it's just too complicated and too heavy:

http://makeashorterlink.com/?O2D512A4A

to waste 11kB for a menu-script...

bernhard

 

[kchayka]

In the majority of cases, menus of all kinds are
written purely in Javascript making them unusable in some cases. However
in this case, the script manipulates mark-up - the proper approach.

This seems to be a trend among those claiming to be accessibility
proponents - start with a great big honkin' nested menu, and hide parts
of it with JavaScript. I emphatically disagree that this is the proper
approach.

Please consider the effect to a keyboard or screen reader user when
JavaScript is disabled. They have to trudge through a whole bloody site
map on every bloody page. And for what benefit? This is not good for
accessiblity, or usability for that matter. Quite the opposite, it
actually makes navigating the site much more cumbersome. Too many
choices per page.

The proper approach, IMNSHO, is to start with just the top-level menu
links in the HTML list markup. Use JavaScript to *add* all submenus, as
well as show/hide them. That way, those who have JS enabled get whatever
benefit there might be from these things, and those who don't won't be
punished for it.

 

[Andy Dingley]

The proper approach, IMNSHO, is to start with just the top-level menu
links in the HTML list markup. Use JavaScript to *add* all submenus, as
well as show/hide them.

Another approach is to not put the _whole_ menu on every page. Put the
whole top level up, and just the "local" part of the sub-trees,
together with any "useful" parts of the whole tree (such as access to
help, search or contact information). This does make some less-common
navigation paths into two-stage operations, but it also simplifies the
amount of nav information on each page at a time, a major usability
bonus.

This requires some level of CMS to do the filtering, either on-line if
you can host it, or off-line to generate static copies for inclusion
is good enough. But it's hardly rocket science.

 

[Spartanicus]

This seems to be a trend among those claiming to be accessibility
proponents - start with a great big honkin' nested menu, and hide parts
of it with JavaScript. I emphatically disagree that this is the proper
approach.

Please consider the effect to a keyboard or screen reader user when
JavaScript is disabled. They have to trudge through a whole bloody site
map on every bloody page. And for what benefit? This is not good for
accessiblity, or usability for that matter. Quite the opposite, it
actually makes navigating the site much more cumbersome. Too many
choices per page.

The proper approach, IMNSHO, is to start with just the top-level menu
links in the HTML list markup. Use JavaScript to *add* all submenus, as
well as show/hide them. That way, those who have JS enabled get whatever
benefit there might be from these things, and those who don't won't be
punished for it.

An improvement indeed, but the many links remain a problem for:

1) Aural access of the document if js is enabled.
2) Visual access with css disabled and js enabled (assuming that the js
manipulates the style to hide the sub menus).

 

[kchayka]

An improvement indeed, but the many links remain a problem for:

Many links is a problem for anyone, methinks. Too many choices can lead
to confusion and frustration regardless of the browsing environment.

1) Aural access of the document if js is enabled.

I think it depends on the particular screen reader. My limited
experience with those that use the IE rendering engine (HPR, JAWS) is
that anything that is hidden via display:none or visibility:hidden won't
be vocalized, so just the top-level links should be read off. That's not
so bad.

As long as there isn't anything in the script that automatically opens
submenus on focus, it might be OK, at least with the majority of readers
currently in use.

2) Visual access with css disabled and js enabled (assuming that the js
manipulates the style to hide the sub menus).

A pretty uncommon situation, compared to CSS on and JS off. I imagine
that those who browse this way run into all kinds of other weird things
already. That doesn't mean it's OK, just that those users are probably
able to cope with odd display issues when they do come up.

 

[4thorder]

Just found this thread from my counter database and of course it
sparked my interest. Hope I am not intruding.

First off thanks for discussing the menu system. I wrote it so always
like to see what others have to say so that I can improve.

There are some excellent comments here - most limitations mentioned I
am aware of and as such continue to improve or offer variations. For
example, http://www.4thorder.us/Scripts/Scripts/JS.DHTMLMenuExpander/
my work better for you.
Another direction I have considered is a flash based menu system.
Anyway, just wanted to stop by and say "great info and thanks!!"

Mike