Newbie to Milonic Menus - Three questions in one!

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Last Updated: Saturday July 14 2012 - 06:07:23

Newbie to Milonic Menus - Three questions in one!

Poster: vikenk
Dated: Wednesday November 30 2005 - 21:04:42 GMT

Hello all,

I'm a relative newbie with the Milonic Menu. I've implemented the menu in a school website that I was working on and I liked it so much, I decided to use it in mine as well.

When I use it in my own site, though, the menu and all the submenu's stretch the entire width of the page. Even if I take the exact same menu files from the school's website (which is working normally), the menu still stretches across the whole page. I tried to limit it to only one main item and one sub-item, and it still stretches across whe whole page, even the sub-item.

First question:
Is this normal behavior for the menu? I though it only stretched as far as it needed to be.

Second question:
I noticed a quirk in Opera. In the school website I'm working on, the menu is to the left, but the sub-items pop out about 300px away, almost at the middle of the page. You can see that effect here: http://www.ssaes.org/test_site_02/
Any ideas as to why? It doesn't happen in IE or Firefox.

Third question:
Can I set the width of each individual menu item? Sometimes I want each menu item width to be the same, sometimes I want them to be custom width. How can I achieve this?

If I've stacked too many questions together let me know and I'll separate them into different posts! Thanks in advance for any replies!

Viken K.

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Thursday December 1 2005 - 6:06:19 GMT

Hi,

First you need to upgrade the menu to version 5.736. Make sure you keep a backup of your existing files someplace. You don't replace the menu_data.js file, just the 3 program files when you upload. I tend to always rename my own menu_data.js file so I never inadvertently overwrite it when I download new versions.

As to the question about your site, we need to see it to figure out what's causing the problem.

As to Opera, it is taking your css body code for the left margin 195 and shifting the submenus that far. I'll report that. Right now the only way to fix it is to use the margins in other than the body to get the divs and such over 195px.

Yes, you can set your itemwidths and height and menuwidth and height.

Below my name you'll see some links, the bottom three are to the different properties style, menu and item that you can set and examples of how.

Also, there is a Beginners' Forum section which has some quick read items of explanations for some basic things.

Ruth

Poster: vikenk
Dated: Thursday December 1 2005 - 15:07:27 GMT

Thanks for the reply, Ruth.

As for the stretch menu - I had a chance to upload it and you can see it here:
http://www.sayatnova.com/stretch_menu.htm

This is the exact same menu from the school website, cut and pasted into my other site. There's no other content. Just the <body> tag and the menu.

I just figured out what the cause was. :>) When you mentioned that the problem in Opera was in my CSS, I thought I'd check out the CSS file in my other site. In that CSS file I have the default for the tables set to 100%. When I removed "width: 100%" the menu reverted to its original size.

I had no idea the menu was affected by CSS, which begs another question: How much does my existing CSS affect the menu? I'm now concluding that the menu itself is table based, otherwise it wouldn't be affected by "table { width: 100% }". So what other elements affect the menu?

Thanks for the input.

Viken K.

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Thursday December 1 2005 - 15:39:45 GMT

Hi,

As far as I have found the only real problem results in the generic codes for padding, margin, tables. And, the only one I know that seems to always affect it is the generic/overall css code for tables. If you're using any kind of class for tables there's never any cross application.

By the way, the menu is designable as a css menu

That is of course for those who know, use and really like and want css.

You can 'mix 'n match' in a sense. You can set up classes for much of the menu and still also use properties in the menuStyle section. Experimenting is the best way to see how using both affects your design.

For example, let's take border as the property we are going to put in css. In the menuStyle you can set borderwidth=, borderstyle=, bordercolor= and also offborder=; onborder=; The off and on border use css coding offborder=1px solid red.

Now, you could make two css classes [one for each mouse state] for border, let's say you wanted to have a top and right border 1 color and size and the left and bottom a different color. You'd set up the css class and code it, then call the class in the menuStyle offclass=myborder;onclass=myborderon; These classes would put a border around each item, which is the same thing the off and on border does in the menuStyle. Along with putting those classes in the menuStyle you could also put the border coding borderstyle, borderwidth, bordercolor. This would put a border around the whole menu, not each item. So, if you set a margin in that menu and that border plus the border classes you would get an outside border around the whole menu, plus borders around in item, plus with two classes one for off and on, the borders on each item could be made to change color, style, width and so on.

http://www.milonic.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6392

http://www.milonic.com/cssbasedmenus.php

Ruth

Poster: vikenk
Dated: Thursday December 1 2005 - 19:14:50 GMT

Ruth wrote:

Right now the only way to fix it is to use the margins in other than the body to get the divs and such over 195px.

Just an FYI. I changed the CSS from margin-left: 195px to padding-left: 195px

It works great. No more menu position problems in Opera. Still though, I'd like to know when/if that margin bug gets fixed. Thanks for the input.

--
Viken K.
http://home.comcast.net/~vikenk
http://www.sayatnova.com

Industrial Strength JavaScript and DHTML Menus

Newbie to Milonic Menus - Three questions in one!