Best Drop Down or Slider Menu Builder?

B

bill t.

Thanks for the Ulead offer but after seeing xfx and Sothink I think I will
choose between those. I am no programmer and don't have a lot of patience,
so for me at least, I would probably choose whichever of those two is
easiest to learn & use. Any suggestions?
 
J

Jim Cheshire

Exactly. I wouldn't ever use a Java solution. Many people won't be able to
see it, it won't fail gracefully, it's slow, and it's just basically bad
architecture. I love Ulead, but I wouldn't go with their solution in this
regard.

--
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Add-ins
http://www.jimcoaddins.com
===================================
Co-author of Special Edition
Using Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Order it today!
http://sefp2003.frontpagelink.com
 
C

chris leeds

me either. id recommend xfx, and I'd probably wait till the sale is on.
it's an absolute steal @ $40!
in the meanwhile, you can download the demo and learn it, then when the sale
day comes up snag it for $40 and you'll already know how to use it.

I'm not telling you jim,
I'm replying to the wrong thread. ;-)
 
B

bill t.

For Chris or Jim,

Remembering that I'm not a programmer and short on patience, which one would
each of you recommend and approximately, how long will it take me to learn
either one? Has fxf been integrated into FP 2002 or 2003, or will it be?
Jim, I noticed your review of fxf was for v 3.5 and now 4.5 is available.
Sorry to be a pain
 
J

Jim Buyens

jon spivey said:
Jim,
which behaviour would you use to build a menu that only works in IE? The
Change Property behaviour would be the obvious choice - of course that
works in any browser.
Click to expand...

Well, the menu at:

http://www.interlacken.com/fp11iso/ch26/dhtmlmenu.htm

works OK in IE and Netscape 7.1, but not in Netscape 4.7.

Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*------------------------------------------------------*
|\----------------------------------------------------/|
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out ||
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out ||
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition ||
|| Troubleshooting Microsoft FrontPage 2002 ||
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming ||
|| (All from Microsoft Press) ||
|/----------------------------------------------------\|
*------------------------------------------------------*
 
J

Jim Cheshire

All of the functionality in 3.5 is still available in 4.5 plus some.

It doesn't integrate into the FrontPage menus, but all you have to do is
point it to your FrontPage Web site and it will build the menus with no pain
at all.

I highly recommend it and you can see why by reading my review. The
attention to detail is excellent, and as mentioned previously, Xavier
conducts his business in a very ethical manner which is just one more plus!

--
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Add-ins
http://www.jimcoaddins.com
===================================
Co-author of Special Edition
Using Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Order it today!
http://sefp2003.frontpagelink.com
 
C

chris leeds

the nice thing about it is you can download some of the presets from xfx and
you won't really need to learn anything.
It can do most things for you or if you chose you can leverage it's ability
by learning some tricks and really do cool things with it.
If you don't want to learn new tricks it'll function pretty well on it's
own.
I recommend you download the trial (works just like the full version but you
can't save anything for html output). this way you can spend a few hours
getting used to it. read some tutorials, and browse it's help menu. I
really can't say enough how great it is.
HTH
 
J

Jim Cheshire

And it's very easy to edit your menu later without encountering problems.
In some other tools I've used, I encountered major problems when trying to
edit the component. I also find DHTML Menu Builder to be very intuitive
which is extremely important to me.

--
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Add-ins
http://www.jimcoaddins.com
===================================
Co-author of Special Edition
Using Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Order it today!
http://sefp2003.frontpagelink.com
 
B

bill t.

Great recommendations from you both! I gotta try it. According to Jim
Buyens, 2003 has not added this functionality and I just have to wonder why?
Thanks again.
 
J

Jim Cheshire

FrontPage 2003 does have the ability to create menu systems pretty easily
using Behaviors. There is no Web component called "menu builder" or
anything like that, but building menus like this with FrontPage 2003 is
pretty easily done. However, without a lot of work, you won't have the same
level of interactivity that you can create with a third-party tool.

It will be interesting to see how the Behaviors features grows in future
releases.

--
Jim Cheshire
Jimco Add-ins
http://www.jimcoaddins.com
===================================
Co-author of Special Edition
Using Microsoft FrontPage 2003
Order it today!
http://sefp2003.frontpagelink.com
 
J

Jim Buyens

bill t. said:
Great recommendations from you both! I gotta try it. According to Jim
Buyens, 2003 has not added this functionality and I just have to wonder why?
Thanks again.
Click to expand...

Well, they added two other features called Layers and Behaviors. A
Layer is basically a <div> with absolute positioning, and Behaviors
are little scripts that run when certain events transpire on the
browser. If you:

1. Create a layer for each main menu option.
2. Create a layer for each drop-down menu.
3. Create "onMouseOver" behaviors for each main menu option
that:
o make the corresponding drop-down menu layer visible, and
o hide all the rest.

then you can create many kinds of drop-down menu effects. However,
menus that you build this way won't work in Netscape 4. And once you
display any drop-down menu, you can never get all the drop-down
menus hidden again. (At least not in the amount of time I spent
trying).

As to why Microsoft didn't create a full-bore DHTML menu feature,
I really have no inside information. My guess is that the product
cycle is too short but again, that's only a guess.

(By, "product cycle is too short," I mean that third-party tools
adapt to new browser versions and expand their feature set on an
almost monthly basis. It's very hard for a program like FrontPage,
which has been coming out about once every two years, to keep up.)

Or perhaps you can safely ignore Netscape 4 compatibility. The
question is, do you consider it a six year old browser or a one
year old browser?

Netscape Navigator 4.0 June 1997
Netscape Navigator 4.5 June 1998
Netscape Navigator 4.7 Sep. 1999
Netscape Navigator 4.8 Aug. 2002

Or more significantly, what percentage of your Web site hits
are Netscape 4.x?

Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*------------------------------------------------------*
|\----------------------------------------------------/|
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out ||
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out ||
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition ||
|| Troubleshooting Microsoft FrontPage 2002 ||
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming ||
|| (All from Microsoft Press) ||
|/----------------------------------------------------\|
*------------------------------------------------------*
 
S

Sue Smith

I bought the lite version of a program called AllWebMenus
and I have been very happy with it - easy to learn, modify
and it is quite stable and reliable.
 
B

bill t.

First, I could give a flip about NN 4. I just can't believe other developers
actually slow down the development of the 'Net by even considering a piece
of software not capable of rendering correctly a site designed by another
piece of software released after 1998.

However, what about the site maintenance with a non-FrontPage product used
to design the menus? Will FP 2002 or 2003 be able to manage the navigation
structure in a similar manner to one built with FP?
 
D

Dennis Blondell

Just had a look at that link to the aspx menu and it looks very
configurable, including database connectivity. I have been seeing more and
more .net menus lately for aspx pages, even an XP slider menu. The problem
is they take some knowledge about programming .net which I haven't got.
Would be great if there was a pluging for FP3 that create menus and other
widgets in .net. There's something for ya to do Jimco :) I would pay for
it.
 
J

jon spivey

Jim,
that doesn't mean the FP behaviours don't work in NN4. You've used change
property to change the visibility of divs - modern browsers use
style.visibility.hidden/visible to do this NN4 uses visibility.hide/show so
you actually need to change 2 properties each time.

Also NN4 only supports onmouseover/out events on divs when the event handler
is added with script - for practical purposes only A tags support events in
NN4. Bearing in mind these 2 points ere's a menu built with an FP behaviour
that works fine in NN4
http://www.roksteady.net/fpmenu/finished/default.htm
 

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