[Javascript] using CSS [WAS: Printing a Form]

[Paul Novitski]

At 4/8/2007 06:17 AM, Del Wegener wrote:
>Your comment "If I had to produce this particular menu " seems 
>strange. Don't you do this kind of menu frequently?  Many of my site 
>owners require that kind of menu.  I do not like the slow load time, 
>the license conditions etc. that go with the particular menu cited 
>in my first e-mail.
>That is why I would like to find a better way -- faster, easy to 
>maintain, and with ME in control.

Nested-level menus in general are fairly common.  What I meant was if 
I were assigned to produce the exact style with the sliding 
effect.  I actually find the sliding, at least at the speed it runs 
in the menu you've put together, to be an irritant and would 
encourage the designer to relent on that.  Personally I have little 
tolerance for animation effects on web pages -- for me they're a sign 
that the programmer is trying to show off rather than to make life 
easier for the user.  I would want to use animated movement only in 
cases where abrupt movement might be confusing, such as the swapping 
of page segments.  But that's just this old curmudgeon.

I used to create nested menus all the time but lately have been 
leaning more toward single-level menus in which you drill down to 
sub-pages to get the sub-menus.  This is a whole philosophical 
question in itself and includes considerations of accessibility (how 
tiresome is a long nested menu to someone reading the page with the 
help of a screen-reader) and how necessary it really is to give users 
access to every page on the site from every other page.

Here's one example of an expanding folder style menu but without the 
animation: http://dandemutande.org/ResourceGuide/  This menu has a 
similar function to yours in that it's not a method for navigating 
through the pages of a website but rather is a tool for drilling down 
into a database, all while remaining on the same page.  The resource 
guide is all done server-side but it could of course be made faster 
with javascript.  The menu driver logic inserts a "selected" class 
into list elements that have been selected and CSS takes it from there.


>Thanks again Paul.  Now I think I will go to Amazon and buy some 
>books--Eric Meyer and/or O'Reilly come to mind.  Would you suggest any others?

I learned CSS without books so I'm not the best person to ask. I 
recently bought Transcending CSS <http://transcendingcss.com/> by 
Andy Clarke for my web design partner and he loves it.

You should definitely read this:

         W3C CSS 2.1 Specification
         http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/cover.html

It's dense but it's got a ton of details that you'll find crucial (it 
being The Spec and all).  The first time I read it I just breezed 
through to get a feeling for what was where, and have been going back 
and re-reading (and re-re-reading) bits every since.

Regards,

Paul
__________________________

Paul Novitski
Juniper Webcraft Ltd.
http://juniperwebcraft.com