Floating Menu Switch

Poster: menufurfer
Dated: Sunday August 4 2002 - 3:30:54 BST

Here's a suggestion for a further refinement of the rolling menu.

If you check Powerquest's Search Engine at http://www.powerquest.com/search/index.cfm you will notice milonic style dhtml menus up top and a tiny feedback floater in the lower right which morphs from plus sign to minus sign between brackets.

When you mouse over the morphing floater (it "rolls" with the scroll bar just like Andy's rolling menu bar), a single menu option [feedback] pops.

What if Andy allowed us to design our own floater and when moused over, the rolling menu bar pops. The advantage?

The floater is tiny, elegant and unobtrusive when scrolling compared to the larger menu bar. IOW, the floater effectively gives you the rolling menus and hides them at the same time. Just a thought. /mfurf

Poster: alpha
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 8:13:18 BST

Excellent idea !!!!

Poster: John
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 20:59:29 BST

Interesting idea, but, being the pessimist I am, I'm not so sure folks would realize that's a menu popup and therefore would just scroll back up to get the menus. FWIW, I don't think it's that hard to make a set that doesn't block the page (see http://westcgi.west.asu.edu/sai/ for my 'thinline' scroller), or design the page around the menu (see http://www.west.asu.edu/cspc/steps/intro.htm for another scroller designed that way).

Just my $.02.

Poster: pat __at__ dracoblu.com
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 21:30:05 BST

Hi John....

I checked out your link re. the thinline menu you created and it seemed to show up unclear on my browser IE5.5. It does scroll down the page, but the blocks only have part of a letter showing. When you mouseover, the submenu appear in different part of the page....

BTW, I think this idea of a small floating symbol might have some merit perhaps if the word 'menu' appeared with it, so as to be clear what it is.

...just my Cdn. $0.02 (for what it's worth nowadays)

Pat

Poster: menufurfer
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 21:31:53 BST

Just like Powerquest has a tiny font "Feedback" under its morph, one can put a tiny font "Menu" under one's own. Or the floater can be the word "Menu" by itself or morphing back and forth with something else. Actually Andy could improve on the idea by making it a combo of his moveable menus and his rolling menus - user could site the morph anywhere on the screen with a left button arrow and let it roll with the scroll. Then right click it like a context menu to bring up the menu bar.

And if you think the user wouldn't right click but go back up top, make your floater morph from "Right Click" to "For Menu". Where there's a will.....

jg: I checked out your handsome menus. They scroll fine. Since the downloads on this board give you only the standard menus, did you cut and paste the code from the sample page? Seeing I have a top frame, my menu is always visible so I have no need for rolling menus. They don't tempt me to drop my frames the way a rolling and morphing floater does. I would never have thought of it but once seen as on Powerquest's board, it's hard not to like it.


/mfurf

Poster: John
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 21:42:33 BST

Hi Pat -

Not sure why you're having trouble on 5.5. Have run it here against 5.5 and 6 with no problems at all (we don't talk about NS any more!).

I had a '+' stuck in my head. Your idea of the actual word 'menu' (how brilliant of you ) would possibly change my mind - if I didn't like my scrollers so much...

Poster: pat __at__ dracoblu.com
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 21:47:08 BST

...interesting. I can't explain why its not looking correct, John. I am running win98. My res is 600x800. Would that make a difference?

Pat

Poster: John
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 22:08:12 BST

Sorry mfurf - Pat beat you to the 'menu' idea by 1 minute

"Right click" - "RIGHT CLICK" You're talkin' to a long-time Mac person here, fella...

Thanks for the kind words on the menu. As usual, it was Andy to the rescue again on the /sai/ pages. It used to be a static graphic/menu at the top of the page. It was necessary to cut it up into 5 pieces and then do this at the bottom of the mainmenu code...



This was the part I couldn't get through my thick noggin' - how to get the 5 pieces in there and scrolling together. The info.htm stuff is all Milonic.

Poster: John
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 22:11:06 BST

Don't think the res would make a difference, Pat, but not sure about 98. That would be an Andy question.

Poster: menufurfer
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 22:17:11 BST

I was able to replicate Pat's experience with IE 5.5 but only on initial load. I too have Win98 running at 800x600. My preferred browser, Netscape 4.79 handles it flawlessly. So much for not talking about NS, John.

I ran IE 5.5 simultaneously and saw what Pat is talking about. Only the first letter of each block of the bar shows, like someone telescoped the bar to the left. And it floats in the same truncated fashion. The submenus fall where they are supposed to but one does not know what one has clicked on to produce the funny effect since one cannot read the top bar.

However when I close IE and come in again, it comes up fine. I thought it was the cache, but I cleared it and tried again and it came up okay. It looks like a first time only problem in IE 5.5. /mfurf

Poster: John
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 22:24:02 BST

Very strange...

Oh, Andy

Poster: Andy
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 22:25:47 BST

Are "images only" being used in a horizontal configuration. If so you mat need to pre-load them.

The menu will use the height and width of the image before it's loaded and this is normally 1x1 pixels and so the menu will draw it's subs 1x1 pixels or whatever the smallest value is.

I've got an image pre-loading script if you need it.

-- Andy

Poster: menufurfer
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 22:29:52 BST

John: thanks for that code insert info. My question is where did you get the rolling code in the first place (other than copy and paste off the sample page) since it does not seem to be downloadable. As a matter of fact I see Andy rewrote the text on each page to inform that the download is the standard menu (not the special menu one might think one is downloading) with the special menu coming soon. /mfurf

Poster: pat __at__ dracoblu.com
Dated: Monday August 5 2002 - 22:35:51 BST

Yes, the menu works John when I visited it a second time.

Pat

Poster: John
Dated: Tuesday August 6 2002 - 14:42:23 BST

Andy -

One of my menus is horizontal but I am not preloading images. Seems when the folks went back and looked again all was well.

Poster: John
Dated: Tuesday August 6 2002 - 14:43:50 BST

mf -

The code is the same for all the menus (except frames). It's just parameter settings that make it scroll.

Poster: John
Dated: Tuesday August 6 2002 - 14:45:00 BST

Pat -

Glad to hear that I can't be wrong all the time...