Please update DHTML menus

[chris_meiering]

I have noticed that the DHTML menus (Community, Gallery, Learn, etc) at the top of the page only function using Microsoft Internet Explorer (at least on the Mac).

 

It would be greatly appreciated if the menus could be updated to function correctly with Netscape 7 (Gecko-based) browsers as well. Perhaps your browser sniffing code is incorrectly identifying Gecko browsers as Netscape 4.x, which will cause all sorts of problems.

 

Thanks,

 

Chris

[david_eppstein]

All this time I've been viewing photo.net (under a Mozilla-based browser on a Mac) and I never even knew there were supposed to be menus up there.

[jem]

I second this request - they don't work using Mozilla 1.2.1 on Win XP

[mottershead]

Chris, if I sent you the Javascript code for the pull down menus, would you be interested in trying your hand at fixing it?

 

You are right that this code only seems to work reliably on IE. Unless I was hallucinating or am mis-remembering, I have seen them work with some versions of Netscape on Windows, but they don't work on Mozilla or Netscape 7.

 

Aside from not working reliably except on IE, they are very slow even on IE. If you could turn them on, you would be quite surprised how much they slow down the page-loading times. (You might not actually want them in their current state, although they are handy for navigation.) For myself, I have them turned off even when I use IE, and it is because of their impact on page-loading that I haven't felt it worthwhile to put effort into making them work on other browsers than IE. It seems a redesign is needed, rather than just a few tweaks to make them work on more browsers.

[mike sisk]

I believe the menus on photo.net are derived from work that Aurelius Prochazka did for the Caltech portal site back in the Arsdigita days.

 

Browsers have changed considerably in the past few years so it's no surprise modern browsers have problems with 'em. Myself, I've had them turned off ever since they first showed up. I'd suggest having them off as the default if it's not that way already.

[steve_dunn2]

<p>They worked on Netscape 4.79 on Win32 but don't work on NS7.0/7.01 on Win32 or Mozilla 1.1(?) on SCO Unix.</p>

 

<p>Brian, if they slow things down so much, how about providing a non-JS alternative so those of us who either don't like MS, run OSes that MS deems unworthy of their browser, or don't like our browsers to slow down dramatically at least have a bar with the top-level options, and when we click 'em, we get (say) another page with the next level of options? Or a new version of the current page with the next level of options displayed (though that might be horribly slow, and put additional load on the already-overloaded photo.net Web servers)?</p>

 

<p>Whatever you do, please resist any temptation to make them Java. Every site I visit that uses Java to implement its menus is ridiculously slow - some to the point of being unusable.</p>

[mike sisk]

Steve,

 

If you go to your workspace (http://www.photo.net/pvt/home when logged in) and click on the link "Turn pull-down menus on or off" and turn the menus off you'll get the exact behaviour you describe.

 

The bar is still there when 'off'--but it's just a link that takes you to a sub-page of options when, for example, you click on 'Learn' or 'Equipment'.

[mottershead]

Mike, in the code, the author is given as "aure@arsdigita.com", so you are no doubt correct about the provenance. At present, they are "on" by default if the browser is deemed capable of supporting them. This means that by default you get them if you have IE 4 or later, and you don't get them if you have anything else.

 

I've thought about changing the default to be the html-based menu bar in all cases, because (as I said) I think the javascript/DHTML version is not too hot. But I worry about all the mail I would get from people with IE who would suddenly not have them anymore and wanted to turn them back on, explicitly.

[mike sisk]

Brian,

 

If you go to aure.com you can read docs about the pull-down code and other places it's been implemented. It's possible one of the other sites using the pull-downs has re-written the javascript code.

 

You could try emailing Aure but after the bust-up of Arsdigita I wouldn't expect him to be too keen on helping out for free. But it wouldn't hurt to ask.

 

Yeah, functional changes on any site with a large number of users is problematic. Maybe a header note saying something like "click here to customize your toolbar" might do the trick.

[steve_dunn2]

<p>Mike, thanks for the info! I hadn't realized that turning it would activate an alternative - I thought the choice was "Show me the Javascript menu bar" or "Don't show me a menu bar at all."</p>

[chris_meiering]

Mike. I want to thank you as well for tuning me into the menu options.

 

I don't personally care much for DHTML menus, but I thought they should be updated if they are going to be included on the site. The plain text ones work fine for me.

 

Brian. Perhaps the plain text menus should be the default for browsers that don't support the current DHTML menus?

[mottershead]

Chris, the html-based text menu bar <em>is</em> the default for browsers that are deemed not to support them; but if the code decides a browser can support the menu-bars, and it can't, then the user would either see no menu bar at all, or a very broken menu bar.

[chris_meiering]

Ahh. So it seems that Gecko-based browsers are given the DHTML menus, but don't know how to use the code, so we see nothing at all. I think I got it now. I guess the browser sniffing code should be updated so that Gecko-browsers get the HTML menus by default. Thanks.