[thelist] css "transparency"

Sam sam at sam-i-am.com
Mon Sep 30 10:16:01 CDT 2002


>
> May I humbly submit
> http://www.tmobile.com

thanks for all your comments on this.
I'd not encountered the IE6 problem some of you noted, and will look
into it and let them know if I find anything.
One of you had trouble also with the locator/cookies: I can't imagine
why there would be a connection, but it sounds like a weird bug either
way so I can't rule it out.

I think projects like this (we did just about the whole redesign - not
just the menus) hold a lot of lessons. Those menus alone ate a good week
of development time -- possibly more including testing and debating
things like the overlapping issue a couple of you noted. And this was
using a tested (.js) codebase we'd developed previously for other
clients. That's a lot of budget and time that might not have been
allowed for. You can either stomp on it and demand a re-design, or
accommodate it and do the best you can. When we talk about innovation in
the web world - including things like going xhtml, table-less layouts,
or just frivolous dhtml menus - there's a price attached to all of those
things. Working with the less-than-tried-and-tested inevitably brings up
new issues and bugs - and leaves you on the hook for providing
solutions. I'd just say be very careful what bite off, and all power to
those individuals and companies that pull it off.

In this case - yes, mostly eye candy, but it's a competitive,
feature-driven industry and eye candy counts for a lot for these
companies. The designers wanted to flatten the navigation a little so
you didn't have to drill down too much, but minimize the cost in screen
real-estate. (BTW the site remains functional and navigable without the
menus). We (the implementation team) did some testing and decided to run
with it this time.

My other final thought on dhtml menus in general: just because the menus
are hidden most of the time, doesn't mean the page is any lighter. It
sounds obvious but as one of you noted it can make for a code-heavy page
- just by virtue of the fact that there's more stuff: more links, more
tables, more css, more js. This equation (more stuff generally equals
more download time) often gets lost when we start dreaming up new
interaction and interface ideas.

All that said, I wouldn't have posted the link if I wasn't quite proud
of it, but as always there's a back story, compromises, options weighed,
and a few unresolved issues.

Sam



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