Best Drop Down or Slider Menu Builder?

[Jim Buyens]

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

Yes, I see what you did. Compared to a stand-alone menu builder, this
is still a lot of work but it does solve the NN4 compatability
problem. Thanks for pointing it out.

For anyone else watching this thread, FP2003 *can* create DHTML that
work in
Netscape versions 4 through 7, as well as in Internet Explorer.
However, this isn't a single unified feature. It requires a
combination of techniques using Behaviors, Layers, and Absolute
Positioning.

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) ||
|/----------------------------------------------------\|
*------------------------------------------------------*

 

[bill t.]

I'm trying to watch this discussion closely. 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?

 

[xmas]

Thoughts..... OR Ranting

How long are the web designers going to carry on supporting NN4?????

I think it is time to "Let it go!" Only when people with NN4 are not able
to see pages (in the right way) are they going to upgrade to a real browser
be it NN or IE.

I turned on logging for 2 days just to see how many people came to my site
using NN4. Well out of 832 visitors there were 2. To me that is a low
enough percentage to ignore. I have no idea why the 2 are still hanging on
to the "Old" technology of NN4 but it is time for them to up-grade!!

Just tired of hearing... But the new stuff don't work in NN4 so don't use
it....

It is time to "Move on" and get over the NN4 bottleneck

just a thought

 

[Neal Stoughton]

Dennis,

I think he meant you should start at

http://www.roksteady.net/fpmenu/

I tried to follow this tutorial, it was certainly a lot more informative
than what Microsoft provides, but I think there are some aspects that need
further explanation, e.g.,

1. How does one get "Link Two" without the "right triangle" in the submenu
1? When I insert "2.gif" it has the right triangle just like in the main
menu.

2. on page 3 of the tutorial, it says "click on the word layer2 and type
sub1", but the graphic shows sub2 beneath it. What should it be?

3. page 4: it says to click on "1.gif" and then find <a> in the tag list.
I only see <img> in the tag list, no <a>.

 

[Dennis Blondell]

Good on ya Neal, you got through a lot more of the tutorial that what I did.
I need to find a .Net for Dummies or dust off my 'Introduction to C
Programming 101' uni text (which I didn't even complete). Good luck with
your questions.

 

[Dennis Blondell]

Yes, I realise what Chris was saying but: "If there were only time enough!
"

 

[jon spivey]

Jim,
not wanting to be argumentitive but you posted a message saying menus built
with FP behaviours dont work in NN4 - quotes
"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".
"However, menus that you build this way won't work in Netscape 4"
you then said you knew what I did to make a menu NN4 compatible but
"this is still a lot of work"
the extra work is the time it takes to type visibility.hide/show - maybe 1
second, depending how fast you type

Jon

 

[chris leeds]

damn straight, that's why i haven't done it yet!

Yes, I realise what Chris was saying but: "If there were only time enough!
"

 

[Cheryl D. Wise]

For the most part we've dropped support for NN 4.x. We will make sure the
site doesn't crash that browser, it is functional and at least reasonably
attractive. We do not expect the site to look the same.

There are a few cases where NN 4.x support is still important since I have a
couple of sites that get as much as 40% of their visitors using NN 4.x.
That's because the computer lab where a lot of the visitors come from (user
group site where I teach some classes) was standardized on Windows 98 & NN
4.x. They finally upgraded the lab computers to XP Pro so I if we can only
get the support desk to quit recommending NN 4.x as 'the best browser'
(people running the servers are all big Linux fans and tend to be anti-MS)
I'll be able to stop supporting it on those sites as well.

 

[Cheryl D. Wise]

According to Eric Meyer, until recently when most of the Netscape staff was
let go active development or improvements to NN 4.x stopped with NN between
4.6 & 4.7 since then only security issues have been addressed. If you use
the criteria of when it went into maintenance mode it would be somewhere in
1999 which makes it a 4 year old browser?

I agree that third party tools make the most sense for specialty dhtml
menus. It isn't that you can't create them in FP 2003 but that most people
don't use them and don't want to pay more for features they wouldn't use.

 

[John Sitka]

ASP.NET Menu is nice. bought it for the company internet.
Runs a little slow on some of the sub 400Mhz PC's
As a manufacturing company the XML tree blends nice with a Process
Driven paradigm(<- one from the bubble years hee hee). Flex-i-ble

 

[Stefan B Rusynko]

Plus a lot of Gov agencies are "stuck" on NN4x (ownership rights nonsense)

IMHO any browser over 2 year old on a user machine should either self destruct or automatically upgrade
--




| For the most part we've dropped support for NN 4.x. We will make sure the
| site doesn't crash that browser, it is functional and at least reasonably
| attractive. We do not expect the site to look the same.
|
| There are a few cases where NN 4.x support is still important since I have a
| couple of sites that get as much as 40% of their visitors using NN 4.x.
| That's because the computer lab where a lot of the visitors come from (user
| group site where I teach some classes) was standardized on Windows 98 & NN
| 4.x. They finally upgraded the lab computers to XP Pro so I if we can only
| get the support desk to quit recommending NN 4.x as 'the best browser'
| (people running the servers are all big Linux fans and tend to be anti-MS)
| I'll be able to stop supporting it on those sites as well.
|
| --
| Cheryl D. Wise
| MS-MVP-FrontPage
| http://wiserways.com
|
| | > Thoughts..... OR Ranting
| >
| > How long are the web designers going to carry on supporting NN4?????
| >
| > I think it is time to "Let it go!" Only when people with NN4 are not able
| > to see pages (in the right way) are they going to upgrade to a real
| browser
| > be it NN or IE.
| >
| > I turned on logging for 2 days just to see how many people came to my site
| > using NN4. Well out of 832 visitors there were 2. To me that is a low
| > enough percentage to ignore. I have no idea why the 2 are still hanging
| on
| > to the "Old" technology of NN4 but it is time for them to up-grade!!
| >
| > Just tired of hearing... But the new stuff don't work in NN4 so don't use
| > it....
| >
| > It is time to "Move on" and get over the NN4 bottleneck
| >
| > just a thought
| > --
| > xmas
| > www.xmas-i-am.com
|
|

 

[Dennis Blondell]

The ASP.NET menu at aspnetmenu.com is certainly good and many good reviews
about it. However $299 for a developers licence! Ouch! all of the asp.net
menus out there are sooo expensive. $89 - $299 even for the controls and
script only. I think asp.net is the way to go for menus as some of the menus
on offer can work in IE4 and NN4 and also have the sliding menu that I am
after. Virtually endless amount of things you can do with them in .net as
well. Must be a paradigm shift as how else could something like a simple
(maybe not) menu control cost so much.

ASP.NET Menu is nice. bought it for the company internet.
Runs a little slow on some of the sub 400Mhz PC's
As a manufacturing company the XML tree blends nice with a Process
Driven paradigm(<- one from the bubble years hee hee). Flex-i-ble

use.
transpire on the

 

[Jim Cheshire]

Not simple, Dennis. Anyone who's taken on the development of a Server
Control knows it's a tough thing to do.

$299 is actually pretty cheap as far as controls go. Many of them are
upwards of 4-5 hundred bucks.

--
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

 

[chris leeds]

I just paid about $200 for a gallery/ uploader from
http://www.aurigma.com/Products/MediaGallery/
it was expensive and fairly hard to deploy but it's very impressive. I'm
actually using it for it's upload capabilities so my customers can send me
their image files and stuff. it's got a multiple upload feature nicer than
any I've seen anywhere.
I guess the "cutting edge" is always uncomfortable on the wallet. I would
say without hesitation that the price they charge for this gallery/ control
is well worth it. but no matter what it's always more fun sending out bills
than paying them ;-)
I'll close by saying the thing I hate most about the .net (haven't gotten
too deep into it yet) is that awful enterprise manager and the most yucky
query analyzer. it makes me miss the php-my admin on a mysql db. I wish
the guys turning out this dotnet stuff would offer an access database
option.</IMHO>

 

[Jim Cheshire]

Chris,

You can access an Access database with .NET. Just use the OleDbConnection.

As far as Enterprise Manager / Query Analyzer goes, those are both SQL
Server tools, not .NET tools.

--
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

 

[chris leeds]

I think converting an mssql db to access is more than most newbies could/
would do though.

as for the EM/QA I realize it's not a .net thing but it seems like when you
get into .net you also wind up getting into EM/QA. I'm going to look at
some .net versions of the php myadmin specifically designed to work on the
mssql db.

Maybe it's just me but these things will make it harder for most people to
get into .net, which, might be a good thing since they'll need to pay people
who have endured the pain of getting up to speed on it. ;-)

 

[Dennis Blondell]

I am humbled :-(

.... and defiantly going to dust off my Uni C programming texts - Getting
Visual Studio .Net today or tomorrow as well.

 

[xmas]

Sorry...........

Going to be out of commission for a while.. Heart attack yesterday....
In Hospital now and don't know when I'll be back..
xmas
www.xmas-i-am.com
====================
from
Mrs. xmas

 

[chris leeds]

My condolances.
Prayers will be offered to the diety of your choosing.
Get well.

chris