First time menu madness :(

Poster: chris thomas
Dated: Monday September 26 2005 - 23:50:35 BST

I'm trying out this menu system at the momment. Seems pretty cool but I am having some issues that are just not shaking out. Here is my test page.

http://www.cg-academy.net/index_test.htm

The test menu is TRAINING DVDS

Here is the datafile as it stands

http://www.cg-academy.net/cga_menu_data.js

Issue one is that if you open that page in IE and Firefox you'll see that the menu's display in radically disparate ways. Of the two FF is the closest to what I want, whilst IE is a bit of a mess.

The layout im trying to get is for the first menu to appear below the initial heading, and for the sub menu's from then on to appear to the right of the menu item that spawns them.

The first behaviour is almost there under IE, but all sub menus are also appearing below them, which is not what I want. In FF the menu's are ONLY appearing to the right. Also, as you can see in IE as the menu's appear they are creating a bigger cell object and pushing the table apart and creating a mess. This is not the case in FF.

So, any pointers here on how to solve the various issues?

1. How do I specifiy in both browsers where each menu appears (below, to the right, and ideally using left/top offsets so I can make exact placements)

2. How do I stop the menu blowing the table apart in IE?

Cheers

Poster: chris thomas
Dated: Tuesday September 27 2005 - 1:10:51 BST

OK, delved a little more and found the article on embedding the menu in a table cell. Followed its example and now Firefox and IE are working in the same consistent manner. So issue 2 is solved.

Any insights into how I can align the first sub menu differently (bellow rather than being to the right) would be much appreciated

Cheers

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Tuesday September 27 2005 - 1:32:06 BST

Hi,

I'm not exactly sure how you're doing what you're doing, however, you've got position=relative in the submenus and that should not be there unless you actually want them to build inside the table and shift it, which is what I think IE is doing. The only menu that should be relative is the 'main' menu. And, it should get built after the subs. In normal table placement, you have two files. One has the submenus and all the styles and such, and a closing drawmenus and the other has only the main menu with a drawmenus. Then the submenu file gets called up right after the body tag with the other program files before any other html object, and the main menu file gets put into the table cell.

Anyway, remove the position="relative" from the submenus, then in the submenu that opens off the main one you want to be below, try using top="offset=30"; and left="offset=-170"; That should open the first submenu at the left side and bottom of that image and the rest of the submenus should open to the right of that sub.

One more thing, did you have a 01 image for that main menu because if so, it's not firing.

Ruth

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Tuesday September 27 2005 - 1:35:29 BST

I wanted to ask why you didn't just make one main menu with all the items in it? Just curiosity, since that would seem to be easier than all that coding.

Ruth

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Tuesday September 27 2005 - 2:19:30 BST

DUH! Forget all that stuff from before, well not about the position relative, get that out of the submenus, but don't put offsets in them, instead in that one item main menu, set that menu to orientation="horizontal"; that makes the first submenu drop below it and the rest will open to the right since the subs are vertical. I never thought of that since it was just one item.

Ruth

Poster: chris thomas
Dated: Tuesday September 27 2005 - 13:37:57 BST

Thanks for the help, it all seems to be working fine now, apart from one issue (of course). Here's the link again, refresh and have a look.

Problem is its suffering from the "Behind Flash" issue on my pages, I have these big flash based adds, and as the menu opens out it appears behind the flash ad on Firefox 1.0. I've fixed that by adding the transparent properties to this flash element. But a friend is reporting that FF 1.07 and FF on Linux are both still having the issue (odd that a newer FF on windows has the isue...)

Is there any other way around this problem. Obviously having 50% of FF browsers or whatever not being able to navigate as planned is a bit of a pain.

Cheers

Poster: Ruth
Dated: Tuesday September 27 2005 - 16:40:17 BST

Hi,

You can take a look at this post.

It works fine on FF 1.0.2, also. Just so you know.

Ruth