new 5.7 woes

Poster: aaronz
Dated: Friday February 4 2005 - 16:05:26 GMT

As some of you may remember, my employers have given me requirements that necessitate a highly customized implementation of milonic to meet them. I've been struggling for a while now to meet these requirements and have been getting pretty close.

However, I upgraded to 5.7 about fifteen minutes ago, and suddenly the entire menu started behaving very strangely, from the font sizes, to throwing javascript errors, to popping menus up inappropriately, etc.

The unfortunate part is that I was working with the pre-release 5.7 version, which isn't even available on your site any more. I have a backup copy of it, and it does indeed still work perfectly, with the exception of a few minor details with CSS overrides.

But our intention was to purchase the product once we had our menu working with it consistantly - but I am concerned that due to the large amount of custom javascript I've had to write, any new version of milonic runs the risk of leaving us with a disfunctional menu.

As it stands, we can't even purchase the product, because doing so would leave us with a licensed copy of the newest version.

I've put a copy of the menu up on our site using the new 5.7 version so you can see what I am referring to:

http://www.input.com/_milonic57

However, what I really need is an honest opinion - Is this something that is fixable on a long-term basis? Or are we going down the wrong path by trying to manipulate milonic into behaving the way we require? It will reflect very poorly upon me if this is a problem we run into repeatedly in the future, so I'd like to avoid it. Thanks for your input.

P.S. - Just FYI - I am aware that there have been multiple builds of 5.7 and this one is definitely the most recent. I /just/ downloaded it.

Poster: aaronz
Dated: Friday February 4 2005 - 16:14:00 GMT

To recap, the menu should not be doing the following things:

- After a "tab" item is clicked, rolling over other "tab" items should not be bringing up their horizontal sub-menus. Only clicking on another "tab" item should bring up its respective horizontal sub-menu.

- Drawing the horizontal sub menus on top of each other as they are popped up.

- Throwing javascript errors randomly - with reference to line 17, column 6345, no less.. which is clearly not accurate.
- Occasionally forwarding user to a page URL of "/undefined" when clicking on a "tabbed" item rather than opening the appropriate horizontal sub-menu.

- Displaying bizzare font sizes / attributes - specifically in the headers of the vertical submenus.

- Displaying underlined text in the tabs.

Thanks again.

Poster: aaronz
Dated: Friday February 4 2005 - 19:08:15 GMT

Additional update: The javascript errors occur when you mouse over and then mouse off of the last "tabbed" menu item. Has nothing to do with the structure of the menu- I changed it around and no matter what the last menu item was, it still caused the error.

Poster: rcranswick
Dated: Friday February 4 2005 - 22:15:08 GMT

Hi,

There were a couple of release of v5.7 after the pre-release. I initially saw some issue and Javascript errors with the first version.

I believe the final version has a build time of 18:01

Check the contents milonic_src.js file you have for that build time. If you don't have it, download it again.

Poster: stmeng
Dated: Friday February 4 2005 - 22:35:23 GMT

Milonic DHTML Menu - JavaScript Website Navigation System.
Version 5.7 - Built: Thursday February 3 2005 - 21:13
Copyright 2005 (c) Milonic Solutions Limited. All Rights Reserved.

Poster: kevin3442
Dated: Saturday February 5 2005 - 7:05:38 GMT

Hi Aaron,

I'm not sure what's going on. In this thread, Andy mentioned that he thought the latest version might do what you have in mind without the custom coding. Ideally, with the latest version you should be able to get the sort of behavior you're after with a combination of openonclick=1, keepalive=1, and retainClickValue=0, without needing very much custom coding at all. (The automatic popup on the next page is a separate issue, but that should easily be handled with a little added js.) I've had a look at your latest test page. It looks like there may be a few things to address before tackling the menu's functionality.

(1) You have a large <style> block at the very beginning of the page's code, before the opening <head> tag.

(2) You have two opening <body> tags (and one closing </body> tag). The first <body> tag appears at the top of the page source, before the <head> tag. It is this first <body> tag that contains the call to your onload handler, setTimeout('onLoadMenu()',100). The scond <body> tag (the one after </head>) does not contain an onload.

(3) All of your menu code appears in <script> blocks that are defined at the bottom of the page source, after the page's closing </body> and </html> tags. As such, the code isn't really part of the page, strictly speaking.

(4) You have all of your menu definitions embedded in a table cell. The only menu definition that should be in the table cell is the main menu definition ("_main" in your case). The code for the rest of the menu definitions should be outside of the table, either in an external .js file that you load into the page (but not in a table), or in the <script> block where you're defining your menu styles (which is currently not in a table). Check out sample9 and the other tablemenu sample for discussions of embedding menus in tables.

(5) I notice that you define your menu styles and your custom variables and adjustSubmenus() function within the same script block as that containing the test for ns4 and the conditional inclusion of mmenudom.js or mmenums4.js. I have found in the past that inserting large blocks of code in the same <script> block as the ns4 test can cause problems. You might try ending the conditional ns4 block with a </script> tag and starting a new <script> block for your menu styles and custom functions.

Having said all of that, I was just playing with the latest version and various combinations of openonclick, etc. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that Andy might still have to tweak a thing or two. I'll report my test results to him.


I believe it is.


I think you're on the right path. I'm obviously biased, but I don't think you'll find a better or more "manipulable" (is that a word?) menu system.


Understandable. I'd say don't worry. I'm confident that we can help you get it running the way you want.

Cheers,

Kevin

Poster: aaronz
Dated: Monday February 7 2005 - 19:29:07 GMT

Hi Kevin,

Thank you for the thorough response yet again...



I have addressed all the things you've mentioned now. Thank you for pointing them out. Some of them I was aware of and a couple I wasn't... it seemed to work without me fixing them so I just planned to clean it up when it was closer to being ready for production... but they should all be fixed now if you look at the test page again. Unfortunately, this did not change the behavior (misbehavior?) of the menu.



This is my impression. Especially since the behavior of the menu varies so drastically between 5.7 prerelease and 5.7 release. We are demoing the menu to executives using the older version and it is still functioning properly... What should my next step be? I am fairly certain they will voice concern if they are made aware of the situation. Do you think there will be a revision soon?



All the research I've done makes me tend to agree with you.



Glad to hear it. Again, I appreciate all of the help you have offered thus far!

update: *5.71* woes

Poster: aaronz
Dated: Tuesday February 8 2005 - 15:49:03 GMT

Just wanted to post a follow up pointing out that I have upgraded to 5.71 as I noticed that it was released... but it did not alleviate the problems mentioned above. It did seem to change the behavior somewhat, however. Clicking on a tabbed item will sometimes exhibit the proper behavior when subsequently rolling over other tabs, but at other times will not. The javascript errors are still occurring, as well. You can see the latest test page at the same link:

http://www.input.com/_milonic57

Poster: rcranswick
Dated: Tuesday February 8 2005 - 17:10:47 GMT

Ok, I have downloaded this page locally and....wait for this.... if I remove the 'separatorimage' from the main_menu_style then I don't get the javascript error when I mouse over the last tab.

I have no idea why this is happening but it may put someone (maybe Andy) nearer to locking down the problem.

Poster: Andy
Dated: Wednesday February 9 2005 - 14:30:26 GMT

5.711 should help fix the separatorimage problem

Cheers
Andy

Poster: rcranswick
Dated: Wednesday February 9 2005 - 14:39:52 GMT

It certainly fixes it on my local version. As always, excellent work Andy.

Aaronz, nice layout by the way.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I may have spoken too soon. While this update fixes the Javascript error it still exhibits a problem Aaronz reported earlier.

As I understand the sub menus should only appear when a tab is clicked. This works fine until you click a tab. After that the other sub menus appear when you mouseover the respective tab.

Poster: Andy
Dated: Wednesday February 9 2005 - 15:01:31 GMT

You need to add forgetClickValue=true; to the menu_data.js file.

Hope this helps
Andy

Poster: rcranswick
Dated: Wednesday February 9 2005 - 15:09:21 GMT

Spot on. Works a treat as far as I can see.

Aaronz, I added the forgetClickValue=true; parameter after your closeAllOnClick = true; entry for this to work.

Poster: aaronz
Dated: Wednesday February 9 2005 - 15:58:01 GMT



This worked! Fantastic. Thanks very much!



Thanks