pulling the X coordinate for each item in a horizontal menu

Poster: twesson
Dated: Monday February 16 2004 - 16:04:28 GMT

Is there a way to access the X-coordinate of each item in a horizontal menu so I can line up my vertical menus appropriately?

Before you respond, please note that my horizontal menu is in one frame and my verticals are in another frame. Therefore, the nice automatic vertical menu adjustment we've all come to enjoy doesn't apply.

Also, I "have" manually aligned them but all that hard work goes out the window as soon as the menu is on a system that doesn't have the first font in my fontlist. Different font than my development system means all the vertical menus become unaligned again because the font widths all change.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Monday February 16 2004 - 17:46:28 GMT

It sounds to me that your best option would be to use a % width so that it always fills the required size. menuwidth="50%";

Then itemwidth="100%"; to fill the required size.

This works best if you have a stretchable layout, a url might help to see, but I think this may be the best workaround.

Regards,
maz

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Monday February 16 2004 - 18:06:53 GMT

I can't think of a way off the top of my head. I can get the coordinates of the menu itself, but not individual items within the menu (not to say that there isn't a way; just that I can't think of one right now). If your page layout could allow for fixed menu item widths, where you specify the width of each item, then you could extrapolate the location of any particular item from the origin of the menu containing it. Don't know if that would work for you, but give a holler if your're interested.

Another possibility would be to use images as your menu items. You could then get the x coordinate you're looking for by locating the position of the image on the page. I have played with that in the past with some success, although there may be some cross-browser issues.

Kevin

Poster: twesson
Dated: Monday February 16 2004 - 18:14:20 GMT

The only thing that makes me persist is this idea I have about how Milonic links horizontal and vertical menus internally so that they're always aligned with each other when used in a horz/vert configuration. It makes me think the data is somewhere just waiting to be accessed.

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Monday February 16 2004 - 20:02:46 GMT

Good point. Now all that's left is to figure out where... worth poking around some. If I find anything, I'll let you know.

Kevin

Poster: Andy
Dated: Tuesday February 17 2004 - 13:24:52 GMT

Here are some internals that might be of use.

getMenuByName("menuname")
Will return the reference number for a menu.

gmobj("objname")
Will return a reference to an object, for example:



Will set myMenu variable as the mainmenus object. You can then use this to get and set properties.

To get the dimensions of a menu, use:



This creates an array with the menu dimensions and positioning, like this:

menuDimensions[0] // Top
menuDimensions[1] // Left
menuDimensions[2] // Height
menuDimensions[3] // Width


To set the position of a menu, use spos(), like this:



syntax: spos(myMenu,top,left,height,width)

The above aren't just for menus, they can be used for any HTML object.

Hope this helps
Andy

Poster: Maz
Dated: Tuesday February 17 2004 - 17:25:13 GMT

This is some kind of foreign language

Kevin,

Could you put into a little script for those of us who don't get it?

Regards,
maz

Poster: John
Dated: Tuesday February 17 2004 - 17:28:14 GMT

Javascript. I believe it's in the South Seas someplace (i.e., foreign...)

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Tuesday February 17 2004 - 23:52:18 GMT



Hmmm... it's already in a script, but maybe it's somewhat scriptic... uh cryptic . These are functions that are defined in the menu scripts, but the function names are abbreviated for, well, brevity (shorter function names = faster download)! Please allow me to unabbreviate... in this case, gmobj() means "get menu object", gpos() means "get position" of said menu object, and spos() means "set position" of said menu object.

Using the internal gmobj() and gpos() funcitons was actually what I had in mind to get the coordinates of a menu. But I think tweeson wants the coordinates of menu items within a menu; and I still don't see how to get that, but then I haven't had much chance to poke around.

Kevin

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Wednesday February 18 2004 - 1:32:22 GMT

oh my.... I actually understood what Andy wrote

Ruth

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Wednesday February 18 2004 - 4:05:53 GMT



Now you've let the cat out of the avatar! Time to start coding with javascript!

Kevin

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Wednesday February 18 2004 - 4:48:37 GMT

I can understand the words in a medical book on brain surgery, doesn't mean I can do it.

But, a question. You said


Now, wouldn't you be able to get any of the menus and set their position with that.? It seems if you got the 'main' menu, got it's dimensions, set it's position, then you should be able to get any of the others the same way, by their name, get their dimensions and set their position based on the info you have with regard to the 'main' menu dimensions and position?

Ruth

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Wednesday February 18 2004 - 6:12:16 GMT

Hi Ruth,

You make a good point. But there's more to the equation I think. Part of it has to do with this question (which goes back to the original): How exactly does the menu system know, internally, where to open a submenu when it comes time to do so? If the position of a submenu is known beforehand -- before the user mouses over the calling menu item -- then you could figure out where to open a submenu by essentially getting the coordinates of where it's already destined to open. But I doubt that the menu works that way internally (I have yet to investigate). It's more likely that the menu system waits until the user mouses over an item, then at that point figures out where the submenu should open, then opens it there. If that's the case, then it'd be instructive to figure out how the menu does that.

The problem is that the position of a submenu isn't just relative to the position of the parent menu (i.e., the main menu). The position of a submenu is relative to both the position of the parent menu and the position of the calling item within the parent menu; both of which can change as the window size changes, depending on how the site positions its main menu. So, to figure out the coordinates where you should open a submenu, you essentially have to figure out the coordinates of the menu item that opens that submenu. There might be two ways to go about it. The first would be the direct approach... get the coordinates of the calling menu item, if such coordinates are available somewhere to be gotten. I don't think that's the case (although it could be and I just don't know it). The second approach would be to calculate the coordinates of a menu item by (a) getting the coordinates of the menu containing that item (no problem), (b) summing the widths (assuming a horizontal menu) of all items preceding the targeted item (problem), and (c) adding the two together to arrive at a location for the submenu (no problem). Then you would (d) set the position of the submenu (no problem), and (e) open the submenu (no problem). The problem is part (b). Now, (b) would be pretty easy if each menu item was the same width (i.e., one itemwidth for the whole menu). It's be a little more difficult, but still do-able, if each menu item had a specified itemwidth. But I have no idea how to do it if each item's width is not set, but rather is determined by the menu itself.... where does it have those widths??? They gotta be somewhere... and now I'm probably gonna be up til the wee hours pulling out my hair (where's that smiley?) trying to figure that out! Don't you just love a good puzzle? Admit it.... I know you do. That's why you hang out here! (Also one of the reasons why I do.)

Cheers,

Kevin

P.S. Sorry for the wordiness... I tend to do that more as I get tired.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Wednesday February 18 2004 - 7:42:28 GMT

I look at it as having to calculate the size of font and family, those are variable so there is no dimension to work with unless you know all font sizes.

It would make more sense to make absolute menu item sizes and absolute submenu item sizes, only then you can match them up exactly.

Then you risk a different font or size, throwing it all off.

Sorry to spoil the fun,

maz

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Wednesday February 18 2004 - 7:47:30 GMT

Yes, I do love a puzzle, well, what I really like doing is trying to find how to fix it, even if it only leads me to finding out what is contributing to the behavior. Unfortunately, I lack any knowledge of programming language of any kind to work on the ones like this. But, enjoy reading them and seeing the solutions reached.

Working on the smileys in between trying to find codes and stuff.

Ruth

Poster: twesson
Dated: Thursday February 19 2004 - 2:05:49 GMT

Maybe the question to ask Andy is this:

"How does your menu know where to position the submenus on the X-axis in a horz/vert menu combination?"

It will be interesting to hear his response on this.

Granted, this is sort of an unsupported question in a way because you really only need this kind of knowledge if you're doing a frames-based menu -- but it would still be interesting to hear his answer.

Poster: Andy
Dated: Thursday February 19 2004 - 11:33:26 GMT

This is based on the location of the menu item.

The location of menu items is gained by viewing the dimensions of "el#".

This is where is gets VERY complicated. Each menu item is numbered from zero to whatever and the variable name is el#. The problem is knowing which number is for which menu item.

However, this is not a problem if you are looking for the currently selected menu item because you can use the global variable _itemRef.

So try:

Cheers
Andy

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Thursday February 19 2004 - 16:47:40 GMT

Hi tweeson,

That ought to do it... the left (x) coordinate of the currently selected item can be used to set the position of the targeted submenu in the content frame before it's opened. The "get" function in the nav frame could pass the coordinate(s) to a "set" function in the content frame before the call to popup(). If you're already doing frames, I'm sure that'll be easy for you.

You could manually set the top value in all of your fisrt-level submenus to 0 (or whatever their static location in the content frame is in your design... I assume top would be static). Height and width of the submenus would be taken care of automatically by the menu, so all you would need to set when opening a first-level submenu would be the left value. One nice thing about spos() is that if you pass a null in a parameter (other than the menu object), then that setting is ignored. So, for example:

would set the left coordinate of the menu named 'products' to 325, leaving its natural top, height, and width alone.

Kevin

Poster: twesson
Dated: Thursday February 19 2004 - 21:10:17 GMT

I'm getting an error:

'_gs' is null or not an object

//distantMenu - opens up milonic menuName inside of mainmenu_body
function distantMenu( menuName )
{
top.hidden_storage.document.form.mainmenu_vert.value="1";

strItemPos = gpos(gmobj("el"+_itemRef));
parent.frames['mainmenu_body'].spos(menuName,null,strItemPos[1],null,null);
parent.frames['mainmenu_body'].popup(menuName);
}

The menu operates without error when I comment out the line with the spos() in it.

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Thursday February 19 2004 - 21:35:53 GMT

Hi David,

The problem is that you are passing a menu name rather than a menu object in the call to spos(). I may have contributed to this by referring to a menu name in my previous post (now edited). Just to clarify, the first parameter in your call to spos() should be a menu object, typically the return of gmobj(), as Andy had discussed in an earlier post.

Try changing your function to this:


Kevin

Poster: twesson
Dated: Thursday February 19 2004 - 21:48:37 GMT

Bit by bit we got it!

Thanks for your help.

Here is the code -- some minor alterations regarding the frame. I removed some specific-use code I had in there.

//distantMenu - opens up milonic menuName inside of mainmenu_body
function distantMenu( menuName )
{
parent.frames['mainmenu_body'].popdown();
strItemPos = gpos(gmobj("el"+_itemRef));
parent.frames['mainmenu_body'].spos(parent.frames['mainmenu_body'].gmobj("menu" + parent.frames['mainmenu_body'].getMenuByName(menuName)),null,strItemPos[1],null,null);
parent.frames['mainmenu_body'].popup(menuName);
}

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Thursday February 19 2004 - 23:53:58 GMT

Hmmm... yep, I forgot that the menu objeject had to be gotten from the content frame; glad to see you got it.

It occurs to me that it would probably be more efficient to change the distantMenu() function in the nav frame so that all it does is get the x coordinate and pass it and the menuName to a function in the content frame that would set the position and open the menu. In other words, like this:

In menu_data.js in the nav frame:


In menu_data.js in the content frame:


This would require fewer references of the content frame from the nav frame (1 instead of 5). Anyway, just a thought...

Have you tried this in various browsers? I was wondering if you might end up having to do a little sniffing and apply a browser-specific offset to the x coordinate?

Kevin

Poster: twesson
Dated: Friday February 20 2004 - 22:21:33 GMT

This was for an IE-only internet browser app so I didn't investigate beyond that. I do however have a confident feeling for cross-browser functionality because an actual X-coordinate was available. My guess is like yours -- that an offset to the X-coord would be the only variable to deal with.

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Tuesday February 24 2004 - 1:34:24 GMT

I've been following this and trying to figure out how to use it to set the submenus so that they will center with regard to the item from which they drop. I think that what you are doing here would allow me to do that, but it's kind of given in pieces on how to do each thing and I can't figure out how you would put it together to 1st find the location of the menu item, then tell the submenu that opens from it to center from that menu item's references as to location and width. Is it possible using what is here, and how would i put them together into one function.

Ruth

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Tuesday February 24 2004 - 5:33:31 GMT

Hi Ruth,

Will you be trying to do this across frames or all on one page? (I'll probably be able to take a crack at it tomorrow.)

Kevin

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Tuesday February 24 2004 - 7:40:38 GMT

Not frames. I've always wanted to be able to position the middle submenus so they are centered from their parent item. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be a good idea for the first and last item of the main menu because I use screen position center and you never know the visitor's browser window size, so centering those items might have part of them hidden off the screen.

Ruth

Poster: priceofacoke910
Dated: Wednesday January 4 2006 - 19:07:30 GMT


Hi, I made a pop-up menu in Dreamweaver and need to reposition the child-menus and I am unsure if this code can apply to the javascript associated with that menu or if there is a more specific way to do it in that menu. You can look at just the menu at: http://newchillsdesign.chillsnet.org/test/menu.html

This menu is incorperated already in the main site, but I really need the "Public Services" child menus repositioned. I have read so many tutorials asked many people over the past couple weeks and cannot figure it out. I can read the "javascript" make-up of the menu and understand the basic make up, but I don't understand commands or things like that. Thanks for any help you can give.

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Wednesday January 4 2006 - 19:15:53 GMT

Hi Mike,

Unfortunately, you've found the wrong site. The Milonic website and these forums are for the Milonic DHTML Menu. I had a quick look at your code, and you're using an entirely different menu system: mm_menu, from MacroMedia. From looking at the js code, it seems that system may have last been updated in 2002, and dates back to 1997. Milonic Menus can do what you want. If you'd care to try them out, you'll find plenty of on-line and downloadable samples from the main site, http://www.milonic.com

Good luck,

Kevin