New site navigation

[athos]

I have tried to optimize the page further, so that as much as possible of code execution is executed "just-in-time" namely finding the "children" of a folder and creating the dhtml elements. it should now load even faster (or rather downloading is about the same, but the actual rendering in the browser is faster).

i have also prepared for overview html so that clicking on a folder, in addition to opening the folder in the menu, could open an overview page in right frame.

items can now be
Item(ID, PARENT, NAME, URL)
or
Folder(ID, PARENT, NAME, [URL])
where URL is optional for Folder. Only Folders can have children (obviously). If an url is specified for a Folder, this will open in the right fram when the name is clicked, and the folder will open. The plus/minus will always open/close the folder without opening a page to the right. If no url is specified, this is the same behavior for the name.

[Doom9]

@athos: looks nice but we may have to increase the font size.. it's a bit tiny.

how about cross-browser compatibility? Sitemeter doesn't work with NS4 anyways.. but NS6, Opera and Mozilla should be supported

[Faro]

Well, we kicked NS4 support now.
Then athos code is more advanced than mine. It uses a different kind of technique to render the menu.
Now it's nearly as fast as mine when it comes to loading time.

NS6 and Mozilla ist supported

Faro

P.S.: look at www.e96.de/doom2 to see athos' menu without the lines.
Forgot to increase font size - i'll do that tomorrow

[athos]

I have increased font size to 10pts now. I also inserted some spacing above the menu to fit with the design.

One problem is that the menu does not handle word-wraps well, so either the menu frame has to be widenened (as i have done here) or some of the item names have to be shortened (for example Format Conversions -> Conversions).

Because the code is (supposedly) w3c compliant, it works without modification in IE6 and NS6.2, Mozilla 0.99 (these I have tried). It should work in IE5 and hopefully IE4 too. Opera Software say they implement the W3C standards, but I have had problems with Opera and DHTML before. I will download Opera and try. I am glad we dropped support for NS4 because this would require the most modifications, lots more code.

About the lines: I feel strongly that they should be there, Faro feels equally strongly that they should not, so I think we need more opinions from doom9 and the readers on this issue.

[Doom9]

Ogg Media Streams -> Ogg Media
Format Conversions -> Conversions

that should allow us to make the frame quite a bit smaller... I'm not particularly keep on getting linewraps either.

[avih]

www.e96.de/doom2
is very slick and very fast to load.
working very nice in my mozilla 0.99 and IE6 (not with opera 6.0 though)

i think it's a good thing to have compatibility with 'alternative' browsers since this site is somewhat alternative itself, and ppl here, more than other places don't 'like' M$ too much, so forcing to use IE is a bad choice for such a site imho.

keep up the good work
avi

ps -OT
i'm using mozilla 0.99 as my standard browser for few months now, and i must recommend it as beeing better than IE in many (all??) areas. it doesn't crash, has very good multilingual built in support, very good compatibility with IE sites, and can use the latest j2re1.4 from sun. plus a handy set of built-in features like tabbed browsing, [controlled] pop-ups-elimination, toolbars/menu visibility, google (or others) search from the location field, skins and more. overall very slick and usefull in just 10M download. please don't comment and make it into a browser war thread. just go to mozilla site and give it a try, let yourself be the judge and ton't take my experience as granted. i think u won't get dissappointed.

[athos]

Originally posted by Doom9
that should allow us to make the frame quite a bit smaller... I'm not particularly keep on getting linewraps either.

fixed, the menu frame is now 155px which is only 5 more than before.

regarding lines or no lines, i think this is mostly an aestethical issue. the images are very small (alltogether ~ 700 bytes) and if we remove them we will still want whitespace (indent) there to keep the tree structure.

[Doom9]

now.. what does work with what? ns4 is out of the game.. but I want ie5, ie6, ns6, opera6 and the latest mozilla if somehow possible.

@avih: did you have a look at the image attached to this thread? most people visiting my site do indeed use IE... a whopping 98+% of 'em. I think people here are capable of making the distinction between not liking a company and using an inferior product just because they don't like a company. I have tried mozilla in late july after getting too pissed off about NS4.7 as it always crashed and the solaris boxes I worked on only had NS4.7. So I first tried opera, didn't like the navigation (v6 now allows you to set a mode that's similar to what you're used to from other programs so it's much better).. then I got mozilla (don't know if it was 0.9.8 by that time.. ).. but that one greeted me with a zillion of debug messages and was neither particularly fast nor stable so I ended up using IE5.5 for solaris which was not perfect (has the nasty habit of sometimes simply not loading pages and forcing you to reload and it wouldn't browse our intranet) but better than my alternatives.

just checked the browser share again.. I really don't know how sitemeter makes that.. now opera is suddenly in the list with 1.01% .. somehow I don't think this tracking is to be trusted too much. Anyways.. the webalizer stats on all servers also show only IE as top 15 browsers (webalizer makes a diff between the same browser on different operating systems).

[Faro]

ok, we need some input about the lines...

But what about the hover effects of the submenu items? I think we should keep the old style and only change the color not the decoration as i have done in my menu.

athos: good work (to put this comment to public ;-))

avih: hopefully more people will get noticed when the 1.0 releases are out. Many companies generally do not use 0.xx products. They simply don't want take the risk.

Faro

[athos]

Originally posted by Faro
But what about the hover effects of the submenu items? I think we should keep the old style and only change the color not the decoration as i have done in my menu.

Yes, i agree this would fit the rest of the site layout better, have changed it now (for folders too).
Originally posted by Faro
athos: good work (to put this comment to public ;-))
Thank you =)

[fisix]

1 thing as input, using the site:http://www.e96.de/doom2/
as the current iteration. also some comments.

1) text is too small. white space to keep tree/branch aspect
is not really important. if you reduce the amount a child
is moved over, you should have enough room to increase the font
size. the end font size should be the same as for the words "Date"
and "News" on the top banner of the news page.

speed is great, so to keep it that way don't consider opening
pages in the main frame to see info on the particular branch
you've just clicked on. if i was trying to find something
mentioned on the news page in the tree, i wouldn't want the news
frame to dissappear as i was trying to find the right
guide/link/whatever. also it would just slow the menu AND increase
bandwidth. of course the bottom of the branch would open the
proper page in the frame.

you have lots of verticle space. even with the site meter added.
you might be able to use that more and lessen the number of
generations in the menu. as a last resort you could lose the little
pluss-minus boxes and just use bold to indicate a parent.

let me finally state that it really looks good so far, and the
changes from the beginning models to now indicate you all are
putting a lot of effort. thanks guys!

-fisix

[smok3]

iam sure js navigation looks cool, but why kill the users of some older browsers (its not that cool)? This way you will end up by making different navigations for different browsers and thats real pain for a webmaster, just leave it the way it is or find some serverside solution, or even u can make multiple pages in the navigation frame that will kinda expand and collapse (but thats pain to administer again).., just my 2 cents :)

p.s. true progress imho for this page would be a cool search engine that would include page articles + forums into 1 search, but i guess for this to really work u will have to dump frames (would that hit the data transfer limit to hard?)

<FORM method=GET action="http://www.google.com/search" method=get name=f>
<input type="hidden" name="as_sitesearch" value="doom9.org">
<INPUT TYPE=text name=q size=36 maxlength=255 value="divx 5"><br>
<input type=submit name=btnG value="search doom9 with google">
</form>

[athos]

thank you for your feedback.
first: the latest version is http://hem.passagen.se/nsane/doom9/, while http://www.e96.de/doom2/ is an older version that Faro has modified to show how the menu looks without the lines/connectors.

fisix> the latest version has increased fontsize, the menu frame is only 5 pixels wider than it was before.

linking the folder names to web pages (in the right frame) will not actually slow the menu down, because loading the web page and expandig the menu can be done simultaneously. The entire menu is fully loaded the first time you enter, i just wait with rendering the parts that dont show for performance reasons (you can see this by marking the menu (like text), CTR-C and then CTRL-V in a texteditor. You will see that if you expand a branch and then collapse it, the items will show up in the texteditor). Still I agree with you that it is distracting if navigating the menu would open pages to the right when you just click a folder.

another thing i thought about is the closing of other folders when you click one folder. This sort comes for free with Faro's implementation, but would require some work with mine. Of course, I could do this if we really want it. Still I think this would be distracting to, i like to feel that i have controll over the menu when i navigate it. If it automatically closes folders that I have not explicitly chosen to be closed, it would feel like i have less control.

back to fisix. i have also noted that there is some vertical space, but i dont really see how this could be used for this kind of menu. Maybe having more items att root level or something. I am using 1280x960, so there people using lower resolutions should have less white space too.

smok3> the menu servers other purposes than looking cool: you can put more items in it and structure it more than if it was static (try expanding the entire menu). Currently there is only one code which works in IE6 (most likely 5 too), NS6+ and Mozilla. This is because it is using only W3C DOM and W3C CSS code, no Microsoft or Netscape specific. I am working on Opera, I hope it should be possible to make small adjustment so it works in the latest Opera too. Administration is pretty easy, just edit the items.js file. No server-side, no different code, no different pages. Also server-side or even "pseduo"-server side (like Faro, he used parameters in the url to control the menu) would be slower than DHTML. As we have seen from user statistics, the majority of users browse with a modern DHTML capable (NS4 does not count as DHTML capable) browser. IMO the advantages make it right to ask the few users of old browsers to upgrade. After all - it is free =)

I definately agree with the idea of a search engine.

Note: I appreciate your opinions, and merely give my own here. If everyone wants the menu in a way that i do not agree with, i will of course do it your way. I can still use my way in my version of the script for other purposes ;)

Edit: I think i found the problem with Opera (quoted from http://www.opera.com/docs/specs/):
Modifying the document structure is not yet possible (ie. you cannot add or remove HTML elements).
Cudos for a very good explenation of the support and lack of from the Opera Developers. Anyway, this would mean alternative code for building the menu, maybe "document.write" might work. How important is Opera support? Added code is not only added work now, but inreases rish of bugs and more work if the script should be developed further in the future.

[Faro]

Hi again, (to athos - my icq has connection problems - that was the reason I were not "online" since yesterday afternoon).

Athos has answered a lot of questions and comments - here are my opinions:

about the compatibility:
My menu (www.e96.de/doom) is fully compatible, but does not use the power of dhtml (btw. DHTML itself does not exist - it's a combination of using the W3C Document Object Model, Javascript and CSS. Whereas most people think using layers is the only idea of dhtml). This power becomes an important role when benchmarking the speed of the menus.
I have not changed anything on my menu, since athos and I talked about the different positive and negative aspects.
So this results in developing only *his* menu further. Still as he sais it has a deficit in some features.
Coming to an end i would suggest: Why don't put a link in the menu frame thich referrs to the old menu (or maybe a new one - with the new sections - or a fully unfolded one without the possibility to collaps it). then leave this menu in plain HTML and every old fashioned user can navigate through our heaven of doom9 ? :-D

I'll do some design modifications on athos menu this weekend and post my results here again.

Have a nice day
Faro

[athos]

Faro> I was just thinking the same thing today. I could try if the browser supports dynamically adding html elements and if not just output the menu (using "document.write") without the collapsing etc part. This should work i think with every browser that supports java script and document.write, including Opera and Netscape 4 at least. IMO this would be better than a separate html-only file, because with my way changes in the menu only means editing items.js and not several files.

Also (again to Faro) please use the latest version of my script for modifications, because i have added some further speedup optimizations to it.

[Refthoom]

My 2cents:
@Athos, Faro: your coding capabilities clearly outmaster mine, good work! I couldn't add anything to that. Thought: couldn't you look at the sitemeter script to make it cross-browser compatible? Then maybe sell it to sitemeter? ;-)

About the menu:
- I too like the items to stay open and not collapse when opening another item.
- I like it without lines, with only plus/minus.

When the menu has reached its final version, I could try and make a tool for doom9, like the current excelsheet, to generate the array for him. If needed, of course...

And some dreams; I could make the next version of such a tool in MS Access, which would make it easier to use. Then, somebody in this forum might be able to programm that code that into a true tool and finally, the tool could perhaps be added to the download section (off-topic yes - but nice).

[athos]

I have updated the script at http://hem.passagen.se/nsane/doom9/ so if the browser does not support dynamically adding html elements (like Opera) it will use document.write to output the menu in expanded form without the expand/collapse functionality. Unfortunately this does seem to work in NS4 because the browser complains about javascript functions it does not recognize. Well, we dropped NS4 support anyway. The good thing is that since i use w3c standard to create elements, when future Opera versions start to support this part of the DOM, the real menu should work without modifications. I have tested the new script with IE6, NS6.2, Mozilla 0.99 (full functionality), Opera 6.01 (static menu only) and Netscape 4.08 (does not work).

What do you think of this solution? To me the biggest advantage to this and separate html pages for non-supported browsers is that to change the contents of the menu you only have to edit one page. Still this does require that the browser supports and has enabled javascript. IMO people should use a modern browser if they want get everything from the web, if you use a mono black-and-white tv you will not get surround sound and color, no matter how good dvds you buy.

refthoom> such i tool might be a good idea, you could take a look at the format of items.js (http://hem.passagen.se/nsane/doom9/items.js) allready, because i dont think the format will change much (assuming we use my menu).

Edit: Got the static menu working in NS4 now too, had to use an ugly check for document.layers but now it works. There are too much space between the line images in NS4 and Opera 6, will try to fix this later (if we want the lines at all).

[Refthoom]

@athos: I will have a look at it tomorrow.

[athos]

@doom9> Try changing
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">var site="s12doom9"</script>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript1.2" src="http://s12.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js?site=s12doom9;var g_frames=true;"></script>
to
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript">
var site="s12doom9";
var g_frames=true;
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript1.2" src="http://s12.sitemeter.com/js/counter.js"></script>
in left.html and the SiteMeter will work in NS4.

[Doom9]

I know that already... however.. sitemeter will not work properly in a framed environment unless you set this..

[athos]

but the necessary variable is still set? the variables are global, therefore you can set them before loading the external script.

[fisix]

alright, the menu is looking absolutely great! the font size has made me a happy camper and it now all seems to fit together nicely. the menu is still the last thing to load on the page, but once it's up, it is quick. i would try to measure what the difference is in bandwidth between loading the old page and the new so no-one is surprised (negatively) when the new menu is put in.

i hope d9 is happy,

thanks (to doom9 as well, as always)

-fisix

[smok3]

if i refresh the page menu collapses to original state, cant u use cookies or something to remember the state where i left it on my last visit of the site? :)

nice work btw, iam still not sure if its worth to kill those 0.2% of users who use older browsers tho, but if it is then make it the best ;) (whine, whine)

[Doom9]

nobody gets locked out that hasn't been locked out before already.. sitemeter takes care of people using NS4 ;)

And I hope that this thread illustrates why you should use an up-to-date browser.. if you're a webmaster you know what I'm talking about.. it's a major pain in the ass making things cross compatible if you want more than a very simple html page.

[dsmith]

I really like Athos' latest. Feels nice and snappy. Suggest putting the top "News" item in bold like the other top-level items, though. Yes, the only things bolded are the folders, so it doesn't match that. However it feels out of place as a normal font followed by bold fonts, it were an unimportant secondary item like the stuff at the bottom (links, glossary, forum). Unfortunately, without icons it's hard to provide any real emphasis for certain items in the list in order to focus your attention.

I'll put my vote in for not liking the navigation that auto-closes other folders when opening a new one.

I like the forum coming up inside the frame instead of popping up a new window.

Hover statusbar text for folders shows stuff like javascript:folder(21) While technically correct, and hiding statusbar information is generally frowned on in certain circles, I think in this case it would be more appropriate to show something a bit more descriptive, such as the name of the folder (eg: "Other Guides").

On the subject of the lines: I like them, but then it's also reminiscent of using Regedit, which is perhaps not the best impression to give. Aesthetically, the version without lines is probably better. However, it feels a bit over-indented when the lines are absent. Perhaps if it weren't indented so much if it's a child node. It would be easier to compare if Faro's variant were updated with the new font size and general cleanup.

Minor quibble: in IE, the vertical line extending down between News and Old News is missing a dot so it looks partly broken.

On the cookies to remember the last open state, that might be nice if it can be done in a very streamlined fashion (ie: if it's as simple as a couple lines of code or so).

@Doom: if you tried Mozilla last July, it was probably around milestone 0.9.4 (what Netscape 6.2 is based on). Though Mozilla really started to become viable as a full-time browser in the early 0.9.x versions, the latest versions are a *lot* better (though not without flaws; eg: Faro's original menu causes the latest Mozilla to crash).


Tested all this in IE 6 (latest patches) and latest Mozilla nightly (4/8).


--
David

[Faro]

To dsmith: I've tested my menu with moz release 0.9.9 - don't have that bandwidth to download the nightly builds daily ;-)
Maybe it's just your build where my menu doesn't work. But i do not believe that - because the mozilla team freezes features since release 0.9.9... only bug tracking
Btw. I hope you understand we take athos tree menu, so I won't update mine anymore - its only online to have a look at for new people joining this thread.

to Doom: Well - being a crossbrowser webmaster can also be hard "simple html pages" - there are far more browser than ie 456 and ns or gecko... Ever tried to view your site with a webTV? I didn't have - but do you know what will it look like? ;-)
I think a webmaster like you (with your great site) can force the poeple to use some browsers - they will upgrade just for viewing this content.
You don't even have to bother - although it would be nice...

to athos: I feel so useless - I will try to create a php GUI script that helps to administrate the menu item file. And will create this while providing a simple and fast skin.

Faro

[dsmith]

@Faro: Yeah, it's possible it could just be my install. As for the version of yours I was referring to, it was the non-lined variant of Athos' (http://www.e96.de/doom2/), not your original menu. Presumably you could take Athos' code and just change the images it uses to get rid of the lines. Didn't mean to imply that you should update the first version.

--
David

[athos]

@dsmith> thank you for very good feedback!

Originally posted by dsmith
I really like Athos' latest. Feels nice and snappy. Suggest putting the top "News" item in bold like the other top-level items, though. Yes, the only things bolded are the folders, so it doesn't match that. However it feels out of place as a normal font followed by bold fonts, it were an unimportant secondary item like the stuff at the bottom (links, glossary, forum). Unfortunately, without icons it's hard to provide any real emphasis for certain items in the list in order to focus your attention.

I think we should reserve bold for folders to keep it more consistent and easier to identify what items are folders. I guess News could be below the folders, but still this item is pretty important. I think it looks pretty good without icons, expecially since it is now one color and mathes the rest of the site. removing the icons also saved some horisontal space.

I'll put my vote in for not liking the navigation that auto-closes other folders when opening a new one.

Me too :)

I like the forum coming up inside the frame instead of popping up a new window.

I noticed that too, and i totally agree with you. If i want something opened in a new window, I will do this manually.

Hover statusbar text for folders shows stuff like javascript:folder(21) While technically correct, and hiding statusbar information is generally frowned on in certain circles, I think in this case it would be more appropriate to show something a bit more descriptive, such as the name of the folder (eg: "Other Guides").

Yes, I like this too and it is really no trouble. Only thing might be that i think some people prefer seeing the correct url or such in the status bar (the default behavior).

On the subject of the lines: I like them, but then it's also reminiscent of using Regedit, which is perhaps not the best impression to give. Aesthetically, the version without lines is probably better. However, it feels a bit over-indented when the lines are absent. Perhaps if it weren't indented so much if it's a child node. It would be easier to compare if Faro's variant were updated with the new font size and general cleanup.

well, it seems most people who have posted something on the subject in this thread seem to prefer the menu without lines. i guess i can live with that =) i will remove the lines (save a couple of code lines and some bytes in download, which is never bad) and see what i can do about the indention.

Minor quibble: in IE, the vertical line extending down between News and Old News is missing a dot so it looks partly broken.

yeah i have seen this. its weird, i think the top item needs to be bottom aligned or something.

On the cookies to remember the last open state, that might be nice if it can be done in a very streamlined fashion (ie: if it's as simple as a couple lines of code or so).

well it should not be too hard to do, but do we really want this? some people might get suspicious of big brother tracking surfing habits when they see cookies, and why would you reload the menu anyways? i will put this last on my to-do list and wait for more opinions on the matter.

@Faro> dont feel useless! you have made big contributions to this little project. for example, your modification to remove the lines from my menu was a very good thing, because then people can easily see what it means to remove the lines, and as you see most (all?) seems to prefer the menu this way. also a GUI for administring the menu should be very convenient for doom9. Perhaps we could sort of wrap up this whole solution and make it available for other people?

@doom9> i really think that my modification of the SiteMeter script call does work, and i have taken the liberty of adding the sitemeter to my menu (http://hem.passagen.se/nsane/doom9/). imo this does not generate false stats, because all the frames except the menu fram are the live ones on your site. as you can see the site now works in NS4 (allthough some styles seem broken, NS4 does not have very good CSS support). please let me know if this was wrong of me to do, and of course i will remove the sitemeter immediately. i just wanted to show that it works.

[dsmith]

Originally posted by athos
I think we should reserve bold for folders to keep it more consistent and easier to identify what items are folders. I guess News could be below the folders, but still this item is pretty important. I think it looks pretty good without icons, expecially since it is now one color and mathes the rest of the site. removing the icons also saved some horisontal space.

Sorry, didn't want to imply that there _should_ be icons; I prefer it without them. It's just that icons would more easily distinguish the types of items in the menu, and that option isn't there for you.

Yes, I like this too and it is really no trouble. Only thing might be that i think some people prefer seeing the correct url or such in the status bar (the default behavior).

If it were an actual URL, then yes, I'd want to see that. But if it's just a javascript command, I don't like it as much. On the other hand, there's the risk of trying the 'open in new window/tab' which will fail since it's javascript, not a link; something I've had to get used to dealing with at sites that use javascript to eg: popup a window with an enlarged picture, etc. Probably not a big deal, though.

well it should not be too hard to do, but do we really want this? some people might get suspicious of big brother tracking surfing habits when they see cookies, and why would you reload the menu anyways? i will put this last on my to-do list and wait for more opinions on the matter.

It's not a matter of reloading the menu specifically, but of reloading the page. It's not likely to be a common occurance, but it'd be nice if it could keep track of where it was. It might also be nice to have it open to the DivX FAQs if that's where I left off last time, for example. But yes, I can see where people might be a bit leery of that. And there's also the consideration that if you reload the page, you might -want- it to collapse everything back to the starting state. Overall, it's a nice gee-whiz feature, but probably not really necessary.


Note on the Sitemeter on the sample page, I'm getting two copies of it showing up in Mozilla (both script and noscript?), but not in IE. Appears to be a bug in Mozilla, but I'm not sure exactly what. Could just be a problem in the latest nightlies, but it might generate spurious usage information. If it works for others (eg: Faro using .9.9) then just take this as a random beta-tester bug. Quibble: where you're including the image specifically, you should add title="Site Meter".

--
David

[Doom9]

http://sm6.sitemeter.com/default.asp?action=help&area=FAQFRAMES

is basically why I put that tag there.. now after having re-read it I think it only affects the referal stats which would be okay as I have these (and a lot of other) stats as part of my server stats. But that still leaves NS4 out from the navigation menu.

I'm against using cookies.. they leave a sour aftertaste and should only be used where really necessary (like the forum).

[athos]

@doom9> i think you put the var g_frames=true; in the url of the external script when it should be in the script before the external script.

as you can see, ns4 now works with my menu, including sitemeter and the rest of the site. the menu is not dynamic though, i just added this static menu for older browser so users who refuse (or for some other reason) to upgrade can still have access to all the links.

[Refthoom]

Well, I made a new version of the excel sheet as a tool for editing the items file. But reading the follow-ups in this thread it seems wasted time :-(

@Faro; I don't think your contributions were useless either. And a php gui would be nice for doom9 since he doesn't like M$ office apps. It would have been nice though if I new this earlier. Could have saved me the time working on the Excel sheet.

Anyway, I think it best to leave it to you guys (faro & athos). Happy coding ;-)

[ephemeros]

guys, I'm sorry to interrupt at this time - should have been here earlier...

http://www.e96.de/doom is still the only script with Opera6 support, athos's latest just gives the complete (unfolded) tree. Faro's code looks small, fast and just plain working to me -I didn't read all posts though, you can hit me on the head if I overlooked something :)

greetz,
eph

[athos]

ok i will try to explain the disadvantages of faros script. first let me just say that i think it is an interesting approach, i have even done some consulting work for a large swedish company using this same approach. for this menu, however, i feel that my script is better:
Faro's script passes information on what folders are open through the url. like i said, this is pretty cool, but imo not for a menu that you want to navigate fast.

one effect of this implementation is that reloading the frame will give the same open folders. another effect that some find positive is that other folders will close when you open one folder.

it also has the negative effects that the menu has to be reloaded (not necessarily donwloaded because it is cached, but i think the browser might check to see if there is a never version on the server. this means extra http calls) and rerendered for every folder that you open. even though the script loads pretty fast, navigation is slower than mine, because mine does not have to reload.
Far's script can only handle two levels, wheres mine can handle theoretically infinite (limited by space and memory of course)
i have not examined the code very closely, but i think it is not as easy to configure as mine. to change the menu you have to make changes in several places and you have to keep track of what parameters sent through the url maps to what folders.

Faro of course knows his own script best, so please correct me if im wrong.

About Opera support, i think that Opera will implement the features of the w3c standard that are not yet supported, and then the script will work fully for those users too.

[Faro]

Hi guys,

athos, you get my approach pretty right - although as you can see, thats not may approach - i'm sure there are a couple of other tree menus working this way (mainly the older ones).
Well I know the problems of writing DHTML code cause DHTML is a big hairy scary monster *g*
Fortunately athos has shot it down. So let's end discussing which menu to take, just try to eleminate bugs in athos menu.

by the way i've found a tree menu at http://inspire.server101.com/js/ecms/ should also be cross-browser compatible and fast enough - just have a look if your interrested in ;-)

to athos: well, my menu could perhaps handle more levels, but that would actually slow down it more.
The administration is easier than in my one, but this is not really important, I could also set the variables somewhere else so the administrator only has to edit a kind of item.js file like in athos one.

I'll try to code an item editor in php this week...

Have a nice day

[Refthoom]

Just a thought: Here http://www.asp101.com/goto.asp?name=nf94x3browserapi is a rather uncommon approach to handle the browser differences.

I know this isn't a cut'n'paste solution, but perhaps it's useful.

[Doom9]

any progress guys?

I've just been browsing the proposed menu using mozilla 1rc1.. looks good.. and the counter works too. I think I'll keep testing this mozilla.. maybe I'll make it the 2nd suggested browser for my site.. I already like it better than opera. What I don't like is having to click in a winodw before I can use the mouse scrollwheel to scroll.

[athos]

I like mozilla too, a lot more than Opera. It bugs me a bit that Opera Software brags about supporting all standards, when in fact they do not (hence the DHTML problems with my menu).

About progress, Ive been quite busy, but now i have time to try and rewrite the menu using some older dhtml, which should hopefully make it work even in NS4. No promises though.. I will also remove the lines, only keeping pluses/minuses for folders.

[avih]

for what it's worth, i like the lines.

cheers
avi

[athos]

I have dedicated most of today to try to implement the menu using old (non w3c) style dhtml, but i could not get it to work.

IMO Netscape4 and Opera (any version) are not DHTML capable browsers. NS4 supports a pathetically small subset of DHTML, and it handles this subset rather poor. Opera does handle stylesheets rather well, but the dynamic aspects of DHTML are sadly missing. Until this is implemented into future versions of Opera, I advice people not to use this browser (if you are planning to surf to sites with more than just plain HTML). Nobody should ever use NS4. If you dont like MSIE or you are using some OS with no version of IE available, I would advice people to use Mozilla (which looks very good in my eyes) or possibly Netscape 6.

That said, I have taken away the lines from the menu now, hope you people like this better.

Edit: Removed some unused code to speed up downloading (slightly).

[Scipio]

any chance of seeing Doom9 implementing your menus?

I read some pages of this long thread but it stopped in April without a result. I'd like to see another menu system than the old left frame static one... If this becomes reality, I would have to copy it to the german site, too.

Thanks for your efforts anyway. Pretty nice.

[athos]

You can navigate the site using my menu (i do :)) by surfing to http://hem.passagen.se/nsane/doom9
only the frameset file and the menu file are mine, the rest is the actual site. in my opinion the menu is finished, unless i hear otherwise.

[Scipio]

so far, so good...

but it would be certainly nicer to have all updates implemented..
On the other hand, the menu isn't updated that often, so you're right, one could really use your menu, but I doubt many of doom9's visitors know of it.

[Scipio]

Originally posted by athos
You can navigate the site using my menu (i do :)) by surfing to http://hem.passagen.se/nsane/doom9

Due to a javascript implemented on Doom9.org your menu doesn't work anymore on most browsers (with js enabled).

Could you make a new demo site with fixed content, just for people to see? When I first looked at it I found it to be nice, so I'd like to see it again... maybe Doom9's opinion changed? ;)

[athos]

ok i copied the front page from doom9 today, so the link works, but the javascript will set in when you navigate to another page.

[dsmith]

Man, I hadn't thought about this project in forever, but a little item I came across recently reminded me of it again. I went ahead and recreated the side menu (more or less as envisioned before) myself using just unordered lists (ul,li,span,a are the only tags), CSS, and a single javascript function. Can't say just how cross-compatable it is since I only have Mozilla and IE6 here, but it sticks to CSS1 and what I think are pretty simple DOM references. Had fun doing it anyway. So, was this project dead, or might it still happen?

--
David

[Refthoom]

@dsmith
As you can see, the last post was from sep 2002. And I haven't seen any inclination from doom9 to adopt the menu while this thread was active. So... I'd say it's dead.

Which doesn't stop me from being curious of course ;-)
Got it online somewhere?

[dsmith]

Sure, you can see it at

http://msp-dsl-148.datasync.com/doom9/index.html

I copied the top, left, and right frames onto my system; had to get rid of the frameset javascript code to be able to deal with it. The rest of the links point back at Doom9, though some of them probably need to be updated. I based the contents mainly off the listing Athos did. Cleaned up some of the other stuff as well.

--
David

[athos]

This looks very good, dsmith! Very nice and clean code.

[dsmith]

Little addendum:

Also, there's nothing requiring a sequential order of ID's. As long as they're unique, and the doSwap function next to it uses the same value, it'll be fine. So, rather than the mn1, mn2, etc that I used, you could just use the name of the folder it's attached to (oldnews, ripguides, etc), and not worry about tracking ID numbers at all. Makes maintenance a lot easier.

It's also fully accessible, if a bit ugly, if stylesheets aren't applied. Could simply hide them from NN4 if support for that is still desired (or selectively limit them, if someone can find out what NN4 -does- support).

--
David