Accessibility,Accessibility,Accessibility!!!

Poster: atoro
Dated: Thursday March 11 2004 - 16:43:31 GMT

This is my first post on the Milonic Forum. First off, I have been browsing the site and looking at demos and must say the product looks great!!! As a web developer for an insurance company, my primary concern for our website is accessibility. I need a menu that is going to be reliable, meaning I need it to function without any fatal flaws in IE, Mozilla, Konquerer, etc... I know this is every web developers challenge.... but even more so for one that maintains a corporate site. My question is, Can I trust a Milonic Menu to render generally the same for all the users of our site? I know the menu will not look identical in different browsers, but I cant have it blow up, or not allow a user to navigate the site. I ask these questions because my past experience with JS menus has not been too pleasant. Please advise.

Thank you

Poster: Maz
Dated: Thursday March 11 2004 - 18:03:42 GMT

Hi,

Yes its got very close now to overall browser performance, I have been knitpicking every little browser inconsistancy so don't be put off by that, its just to reach a higher standard of perfection.

I too want the menu to display and function its best in every browser.

For disability accessibility and no javascript I have a couple of workarounds, with a noscript menu, first html link to the site map for screen readers and search engines. Placing the menu on top of everything is like icing on the cake for most visitors.

You can check out my site, I even used the right margin which is not the easiest to control.

The join and login is also running on the same file placed in different positions. Using a templating sysem I can add something easily with one link and have it function throughout the site in a second.

http://www.mercuryexposure.org

Of course it would be nice to know what issues arise in unsupported browsers, or switch off the menu for a html link. But I think those are few and problems are avoidable. Like avoiding the positioned horizontal % offset width in the main menu, which is best performed in a table.

Hope this helps,
maz

RE: Accessiblity

Poster: atoro
Dated: Thursday March 11 2004 - 22:20:35 GMT

Thanks for the reply maz, and by the way, great site. I guess I could use the <noscript> feature as a safety net for a visitor that has JS disabled. Im kind of new to the milonic menu scene so I really didnt understand what you meant by avoiding the positioned horizontal % offset width in the main menu. For my site, I will be looking to implement a horizontal menu across the top of each page. Also, I see you're using a PHP templating system on your site. Just getting into those as well. I have a test box set up where I do all my developing and Im working on re-building the entire site with PHP. Anyways, looking forward to testing out the Milonic menu.

Poster: Maz
Dated: Friday March 12 2004 - 0:18:52 GMT

I took at look at the url, if you intend to place a left aligned horizontal menu you shouldn't run into problems.

I was talking about trying to center a menu 100% and 100% items to stretch the width, then I tried to offset left and right margins, almost impossible, however, to overcome these problems its possible to put the menu in a table, tables are also good if its going to move around on different pages. But I prefer not to use tables making all pages in css and the menu can't go in a div. IE doesn't really stretch so giving each item a an itemwidth or just let them flow naturally. Some people have placed an item in the layout and mapped the menu to the link, not sure if I explained that right and haven't tried it.

You can do all kinds of things with javascript and php, for the techies.

If you use the functionality built into the menu you are more likely to get a quicker smoother loading and function.

Start with the basic set up to get it working, before experimenting with all the possiblities.

maz