high3dcolor and low3dcolor supported in future releases?

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Wednesday June 18 2003 - 0:38:48 BST

Hi Andy,

I've been away from "Milonic Menuing" for quite some time, absorbed in other work. I'm just starting to dabble with v4. Very nice indeed so far! One concern however... In the v4 samples, I noticed that the comments for high3dcolor and low3dcolor are "Not sure if this will be included in final release". My v3 menus use these properties and I like the effect a lot, so I'm wondering if they will or won't be supported in the final release. Any idea?

Best Regards,

Kevin

Poster: Andy
Dated: Thursday July 17 2003 - 23:34:11 BST

We'll try and get it done for the final release.

The problem, as always, is Netscape 4.

Cheers
Andy

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Thursday July 17 2003 - 23:57:45 BST

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the reply. I can only speak for myself, but it would not bother me in the least if v5 did not support NS4 completely. In fact, one could argue that if developers keep bending over backwards to support NS4, it'll never go away!

Go have a pint... I'm sure you deserve it!

Kevin

Poster: John
Dated: Friday July 18 2003 - 0:25:23 BST

Got the latest, Kevin? It's now v5 at http://www.milonic.com/v5_rc3/menu5.zip.

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Friday July 18 2003 - 9:58:27 BST

Hi John,

Yeah... I got it. But I can't seem to find much time these days to play with it. Probably have to wait until we release our own new products in about a month or so... which will require a major overhaul of our site (e.g., an excuse for me to play). It's probably just as well though... By the time I dig into it, you guys will already have all the answers!

Cheers,

Kevin

Poster: Andy
Dated: Friday July 18 2003 - 10:16:09 BST

Going back to the Netscape 4.x comment that Kevin made earlier.

To be honest, I had never really thought of it this way but you have a real darn good point there

It does (obviously now) seem that the more we support Netscape 4 the less inclined the users are to move on. I really see Netscape 4.x as holding things up for everybody and I estimate that within a year, or 2 at the most, it will have mostly vanished and anybody still using it will do so at their own risk. Netscape dropped support for it a while ago now so why shouldn't we?

One major concern is the large groups, more predominantly government bodies, that installed Netscape 4.x years ago and have a policy only to upgrade when they have completed a full assessment. As this sometimes only ever happens say once every 5 years or so they are now the people holding up the future of the WWW.

I also know of a major electrical retailer that uses Netscape 4.x in all of their stores. For them, upgrading would be a major problem and would take quite a while but I think now is the time to say enough is enough. There are plenty of good DOM compliant browsers that you need to upgrade to, so you better get on with it.

We have already separated Netscape 4.x from the rest of the menu code. This is so that we can easily remove Netscape 4.x from the equation when the time comes. We also, have omitted a number of features and cosmetics from Netscape 4.x that were simply too cumbersome to do.

Anything more you think we should do?

Cheers
Andy

Poster: John
Dated: Saturday July 19 2003 - 18:03:22 BST

Hi Andy -

<soapbox>
I fully agree with dumping support for NS4 completely. It requires special coding for everything from css to tables with spans just to work at all, and that means a lot of extra time for me coding my ASU sites. They have decided, because of the high number of NS4 hits in the logs, to continue supporting it (that means I'm the stuckee). I believe folks should stay current, regardless of who they are. This is just another example of government in action, staying so far behind things (all things), they don't know what's happening in the real world.

Dump the module. You'd have at least one very happy person here.
</soapbox>

Sorry - you guys touched a button...

Poster: Andy
Dated: Monday July 21 2003 - 10:49:29 BST

The idea is to get Netscape 4.x support as good as we think it should be and then cease supporting it.

The module will still ship with the menu but any new features or enhancements will not be added to the Netscape 4.x code.

The new menu file format will never need changing so we can just work on the DOM file and make this menu better with each release.

That's the theory anyhow

Cheers
Andy

Poster: John
Dated: Monday July 21 2003 - 16:12:22 BST

Sounds good to me.

Go fer it

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Tuesday July 22 2003 - 6:58:28 BST

Hi Guys,

Sounds like an excellent plan to me too.

As you can tell, I'm no fan of NS4 either. I personally no longer worry about NS4. If something I do works in it, fine. If not... also fine. As with all software, the onus is on the user to stay current. But since browsers are a conduit through which the user views the end product or result, a unique attitude seems to have developed among many web surfers that the responsibility is with the web designer to support whatever software the user happens to have... as if the web site (for which "updates" are free) is the application rather than the browser. It's an odd idea that I don't think applys generally to other software. You don't see many users complaining that they can't load a PowerPoint 2003 file into PowerPoint for Office 95!

As a commercial developer of software products, I can also relate to pressures from the competition. So, Andy, your proposal makes perfect sense. Your menu will indeed support NS4 and can be advertised as such, thus remaining competitive with other menu systems that claim to support NS4 (not that any really come close to Milonic). But it doesn't have to offer all of the features for NS4... which may also do some good by adding to the growing number of incentives out there for users to uprade their browsers. As I said... a good plan!

Cheers,

Kevin

Poster: John
Dated: Tuesday July 22 2003 - 15:05:22 BST

Hi Kevin -


An excellent point, which I hadn't thought of before. Browsers are a 'backwards' breed. Unfortunately I don't see that attitude changing anytime soon. Of course, browser updates are free as well, so why is it so hard for folks to keep up? I fight with my boss every day about having to support NS4, but get noplace fast. It's keeping me from going to a full-blown css implementation of my main sites here, and I really don't like it.

Read yesterday where AOL is dumping the rest of the NS development team, and over a period of time giving all rights to the Mozilla folks. And you probably heard there will be no more development on IE for the Mac. 5.2.3 is the final, unless they find serious bugs. Safari won that batle in a hurry.

Sounds good - we'll start our own personal NS4 war right here.