Documentation

Poster: Noodles
Dated: Wednesday July 2 2003 - 23:56:08 BST

Is there any documentation for version 5? Like all the commands/variables needed to make the menu do cool stuff?

I've looked at the examples, but is there anything better?

Thanks

Poster: Hergio
Dated: Thursday July 3 2003 - 21:13:46 BST

I ran the code through my debugger and found a couple of variables. These are not guaranteed to work so use them at your own risk. BTW, the values after the variables are what happened to be set for me at the time....if they are null that means I just didnt declare them in my data.js file.

Variables that exist for the menus:
top = "offset=1"
left = null
itemwidth = null
itemheight = null
borderwidth = 1
screenposition = null
style = XPStyle
alwaysvisible = null
align = null
hidediv = null
orientation = "vertical"
keepalive = null
overallwidth = null
openonclick = null
bgimage = null
scrollable = null
margin = 2
overflow = null
position = null
openstyle = null
overfilter = "Alpha(style=0,opacity=90);Shadow(color='#666666', Direction=135, Strength=4)"
outfilter = null
followscroll = null

Variables that exist for the styles:
onbgcolor = "#eaf2ff"
oncolor = "#000000"
offbgcolor = "#f3f3f3"
offcolor = "#000000"
bordercolor = "#000000"
separatorcolor = "#8A867A"
padding = 2
fontsize = "11px"
fontstyle = "normal"
fontweight = "normal"
fontfamily = "Tahoma,Helvetica,Verdana"
high3dcolor = null
low3dcolor = null
pagecolor = null
pagebgcolor = null
pageimage = null
headercolor = null
headerbgcolor = null
subimage = "images/arrow.gif"
subimageposition = null
subimagepadding = null
separatorsize = null
stylenum = 1
borderstyle = "solid"
borderwidth = null
ondecoration = null
decoration = null
onbold = null
onitalic = null
separatorheight = null
separatorwidth = "80%"
separatorpadding = 2
separatoralign = "center"
onborder = "1px solid #0000ff"
image = null
align = null
onclass = null
offclass = null


Again, some MAY OR MAYNOT work or even be supported. They are just what popped up to me as available properties of the menu and style objects.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Thursday July 3 2003 - 21:34:31 BST

Appreciate the tips ;)
What replaces <span title=text></span>
Thank you!
maz

Poster: Hergio
Dated: Friday July 4 2003 - 4:54:36 BST

I am not sure what you mean by that span comment. I am guessing you are wondering if the menu has a title attribute. Yes it does, its called title I believe, ironically . Duh. haha
Anyways, I omitted it since its set when you create the menu with the new milonic call. I guess you can change that too if you had a reason to.
Hope thats what you were referring to.

5

Poster: Maz
Dated: Sunday July 6 2003 - 12:38:16 BST

I'll stay here since there is no forum for 5 yet.

You understood, I tried 'title' for each menu-title it didn't work for me.
There is no set order now? Anything goes: name=a; title=a;

Now I'm waiting patiently for more clues, I got stuck on positioning the menu. I changed "center;middle"; to "center"; top position "50" but it sits at the top of the page not moving into position.

What I find confusing based on trial and error, is some values require quotes and some require no quotes. Is this something only one proficient in j/s knows? Are there guidelines on this?

Thank you
maz

Poster: Hergio
Dated: Monday July 7 2003 - 15:13:47 BST


Whoops, I was incorrect about the title object. The property is called "name", I believe.

There is no preference on order. I have successfully moved properties around in the definitions and haven't seen any adverse affects from it. Whether I declare itemwidth at the top of the definition or at the bottom, it still figures it out. The way Andy's menu goes through and picks out each property is no longer based on arrays, the menus are now 'objects' themselves and they have 'properties' which can be set and read. So to find the width, you no longer have to say menu[3], you can say menu0.itemwidth and get the value.


When you define your menu, try
top=50;
screenposition = "center";


The way JavaScript works, there are string objects and there are number objects, amongst others. When you have something that contains non-numeric (letters, symbols) characters, it must be declared in quotes as it will be considered a string. So to create something that will have letters in it, or an equals sign in it, you must place quotes around it. Andys code goes in and parses out the required information. If the value is a straight number, you are allowed to just type the number, without the quotes. This is because the number is a number object at that point, not a string so no quotes needed. You will see this pretty routinely in the menu code; that numbers are by themselves and other things are in quotes. Now a quirky thing to note is, there are places where the code accepts numbers, ie. itemwidth=400; , but what will also work is itemwidth="400";. The reason being, Javascript allows for implicit casting of object types. If you are not savvy to object oriented programming, this will seem foreign to you. But basically what it means is JavaScript will figure out that 4 * "4" will evalutate to 16, because it wil' convert the "4" to a 4, then multiply (you can only multiply two numbers). The expression "4" + 4 will evaluate to "44" because the 4 will be converted to a string and the "+" operator is a string function to concatinate two strings. And also the menu basically just pastes that value entered into some HTML code, so 456 and "456" will both paste the same into the HTML.

Hope this helps.

Poster: Janetp
Dated: Tuesday July 8 2003 - 1:52:59 BST

I agree with you Noodles, some proper documentation with this product would be useful. Save a lot ot trial and error and wasted time.

Examples only show so much. 1 or 2 pages explaining all the options would save a lot of questions on this forum too.

As we are expected to pay a licence fee for this script I would have thought documentation was a "given"

Poster: Hergio
Dated: Tuesday July 8 2003 - 11:44:00 BST

Whoa now, don't get upset with the menu or Milonic. This version JUST came out a few days ago. Its still in its Release Candidate 1 stage, so technically it hasn't even had an official unvieling. Andy is doing us (and himself too) a favor by releasing beta versions and pre-release versions of the software so that we may try it out, find bugs, and just plain get our grubby little hands on the new stuff. We're lucky he even threw examples our way. Hes working hard at getting the menu working great. Would you rather have a mediocre menu doing half of what this one does with sweet-ass documentation that shows you ALL in ins and outs, or a kick-ass menu with some examples of how to utilize its features, with documentation to come later?

Also this menu is free if you are using it for personal use. That in itself is nice of the company. For licensing, he provides personal support for 1yr so anything you need, they'd help you with.

And lastly, I am sure there will be more documentation as the menu matures and nears final release. For now you have the list above for finding features. Most of the stuff on this newgroup is mainly fixing bugs, or trying to find out why quirky things happen anyways.

Just be patient and you'll get what you want, I'm sure. Milonic with Andy at the helm will be sure to come through for ya and give you some docs soon.

Poster: Janetp
Dated: Tuesday July 8 2003 - 12:19:59 BST

Hergio,

Don't get me wrong, I think it is a great product. Actually I was not aware that there was a new release. I downloaded mine about a month ago. What version would that be? If it is an older version, I can't find anything about documentation for that either.

I'm happy to pay the licence fee, but would like some documentation. It's good that there is support but again I'd rather not waste people's time if I can do it right first time myself.

If I'm not running version 5 then obviously I'm in the wrong forum. So for those of you who've used this product for a while, can you point me to any documentation for version3/4?

Thanks

Poster: John
Dated: Tuesday July 8 2003 - 16:04:07 BST


Note that versions 3 and 4 are entirely different. The last version of 3 is 3.5.15, and there are no docs. It was a do-it-yourself project from Andy's examples and the help provided here.

v4 has been renamed to v5 and is in final candidate stage (or release candidate, if you prefer). v5 is a completely new puppy, with more options than you can shake the proverbial stick at. Expect to see a v5_rc2 today (unless he got stuck on something). Andy has promised a complete set of docs for this one as soon as the menu is in release.

I would suggest you move to v5 - it's where all the action is going to be.

http://www.milonic.com/v5_rc1/menu.htm.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Tuesday July 15 2003 - 4:26:29 BST

When you define your menu, try
top=50;
screenposition = "center";

.............
It didn't work. I tried every possible combination. Its only responding to screenposition, I tried null then it just sat in the top left corner. Top & Left positions are not responding.