Complex Menus

[dorayme]

Re: Complex Menus

In article <1213229998.441 21@angel.amnet. net.au>,
David Morris <dlmorrisDONTSP AM@netwizDONTSP AM.com.auwrote:

I have not altered the testmenu pages, so the changes are only visible
on the main site: < http://www.netwiz.com.au/home.html >.

There is an unsatisfactoril y small area of contact for the mouse to
engage the dropdown menu, indeed the area to activate any of the links
in that strip menu on my Safari. In FF it is better. In my Opera, the
whole strip menu simply does not appear.

So what is wrong. I have not looked, but I noticve one validation error,
possibly questionable use of a transitional doctype and 13 errors in the
CSS.

--
dorayme

[David Morris]

Re: Complex Menus

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

Most rudely, you assigned the font size of 62.5%. Why on earth did you
do that? The body font should be 100%; I thought I had made that
relatively clear. See:
http://tekrider.net/html/fontsize.php

You are jumping to conclusions here. That is a method of scaling. The
font size is later enlarged. The size should be about, if not exactly
the same, as it was previously. The difference is that you can now
resize it in IE as well as other browsers.

For reference see: < http://www.clagnut.com/blog/348/>.

The CSS has been compressed. The originals can now be found at the
bottom of < http://www.netwiz.com.au/cssmenu.html >.

[David Morris]

Re: Complex Menus

dorayme wrote:

In article <1213229998.441 21@angel.amnet. net.au>,
David Morris <dlmorrisDONTSP AM@netwizDONTSP AM.com.auwrote:
>

>I have not altered the testmenu pages, so the changes are only visible
>on the main site: < http://www.netwiz.com.au/home.html >.

>
There is an unsatisfactoril y small area of contact for the mouse to
engage the dropdown menu, indeed the area to activate any of the links
in that strip menu on my Safari. In FF it is better. In my Opera, the
whole strip menu simply does not appear.
>

Which version of Opera? It seems to work for me in
9.27. Is the lastest stuck in a proxy somewhere?

So what is wrong. I have not looked, but I noticve one validation error,
possibly questionable use of a transitional doctype and 13 errors in the
CSS.
>

I just had 13 too. Some of those are hacks (Konqueuer being one) the
others might need to be fixed. The Validator may have changed since I
last tested, as the the original test page which has not changed now
fails too.

[David Morris]

Re: Complex Menus

dorayme wrote:

>
There is an unsatisfactoril y small area of contact for the mouse to

engage the dropdown menu, indeed the area to activate any of the links
in that strip menu on my Safari.

Meant to add...
My first reaction is that there isn't a way of doing this, but I guess I
could slide the next level flyout left over the extant one, which would
give you move wiggle room. Is this sort of what you mean?

[dorayme]

Re: Complex Menus

In article <1213234427.867 575@angel.amnet .net.au>,
David Morris <dlmorrisDONTSP AM@netwizDONTSP AM.com.auwrote:

dorayme wrote:

In article <1213229998.441 21@angel.amnet. net.au>,
David Morris <dlmorrisDONTSP AM@netwizDONTSP AM.com.auwrote:

I have not altered the testmenu pages, so the changes are only visible
on the main site: < http://www.netwiz.com.au/home.html >.

There is an unsatisfactoril y small area of contact for the mouse to
engage the dropdown menu, indeed the area to activate any of the links
in that strip menu on my Safari. In FF it is better. In my Opera, the
whole strip menu simply does not appear.

>
Which version of Opera? It seems to work for me in
9.27. Is the lastest stuck in a proxy somewhere?
>

Mac version, 9.24

Anyway, the Safari phenomena was the one that made me look at your page
in Opera. Safari is a good canary. Perhaps I should look at your html
and css soon? I see you are about to get into trouble over font-sizes. B
is aware, as you are not perhaps, that this scheme of font-sizing has
major objections.

So what is wrong. I have not looked, but I notice one validation error,
possibly questionable use of a transitional doctype and 13 errors in the
CSS.
>

>
I just had 13 too. Some of those are hacks (Konqueuer being one) the
others might need to be fixed. The Validator may have changed since I
last tested, as the the original test page which has not changed now
fails too.

--
dorayme

[dorayme]

Re: Complex Menus

In article <1213235230.272 161@angel.amnet .net.au>,
David Morris <dlmorrisDONTSP AM@netwizDONTSP AM.com.auwrote:

dorayme wrote:

>
There is an unsatisfactoril y small area of contact for the mouse to

engage the dropdown menu, indeed the area to activate any of the links
in that strip menu on my Safari.
>
Meant to add...
My first reaction is that there isn't a way of doing this, but I guess I
could slide the next level flyout left over the extant one, which would
give you move wiggle room. Is this sort of what you mean?

What I meant was that when you go to mouse over the links, no hand
curser appears and nothing happens on click and hold down or even single
or double click and let go *when the arrow cursor is over the text
itself*. It changes to a hand and activates stuff in a narrow
(height-wise) area under the links - an area that an underline might
occupy.

Plus there is trouble when enlarging the text, the horizontal nav text
starts to disappear from the bottom up into white. This suggests you are
using over constraining heights. This happens in all browsers.

Frankly, I think you are getting lost with all this font-sizing and so
many line-heights with units. Might you might think of establishing a
much simpler CSS sheet. Don't put any font-sizes or any line heights in
beyond the following not much more than nothing:

body {font-size: 100%; line-height: 1.3;} /* no units, no px or ems */

and maybe one or two other things like footers and nav to be a bit
smaller:

#footer {font-size: .85em;}

and h1 to be something sensible like 1.8em and so on.

Tread lightly, don't over-specify so much. No need to repeat css
instructions that are going to be inherited. This will help you not to
get lost.

--
dorayme

[David Morris]

Re: Complex Menus

>

Mac version, 9.24
>

Hmmm, that's going to be hard to test as I don't have a Mac. Opera 7
had some problems too (perhaps related?).

Anyway, the Safari phenomena was the one that made me look at your page
in Opera. Safari is a good canary. Perhaps I should look at your html
and css soon? I see you are about to get into trouble over font-sizes. B
is aware, as you are not perhaps, that this scheme of font-sizing has
major objections.

I saw the objections at the bottom of the article, and didn't see them
as serious (they seemed to mostly miss the author's point). If there
are other issues then as you say I am unaware of them. B jumped in with
a response that was very like those at the bottom of that article.

I confess I haven't fully got to the bottom of the font business. There
are a lot of issues - some like a lot of these discussions here related
to purity versus pragmatism. For me, I would like to be pure to the
point of sacrificing pragmatism, and then pragmatism wins.

Trying to get all the styles to match up to the size I wanted on screen
was not easy, and I still haven't quite understood the variations (eg
why the <ul<lidescendan ts change sizes differently in FF and IE).
So this is still very much a learning exercise for me.

I fixed the CSS validation issues except for the Konqueror hacks. There
seems to be an errant <divbut I haven't fount that yet (it isn't in
the template files as far as I can tell and the content is/should be
free of them).

[Darin McGrew]

Re: Complex Menus

Re: the clagnut hack
Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

>>Most rudely, you assigned the font size of 62.5%. Why on earth did
>>you do that? The body font should be 100%; I thought I had made
>>that relatively clear. See:
>>http://tekrider.net/html/fontsize.php

David Morris wrote:

>The size should be about, if not exactly the same, as it was
>previously.

Beauregard T. Shagnasty <a.nony.mous@ex ample.invalidwr ote:

No, it is smaller.

Or perhaps the net font size is larger, when the following is in a user
style sheet:

html, body { font-size: 100% !important }
--
Darin McGrew, mcgrew@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, darin@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"Good teachers are costly. Bad teachers cost more." - Bob Talbert

[David Morris]

Re: Complex Menus

dorayme wrote:

>
What I meant was that when you go to mouse over the links, no hand
curser appears and nothing happens on click and hold down or even single
or double click and let go *when the arrow cursor is over the text
itself*. It changes to a hand and activates stuff in a narrow
(height-wise) area under the links - an area that an underline might
occupy.

A quick check with IE FF2 OP9 and SA33 (win) in Win2K shows that the
hand pointer is working. In fact is seems to be on all through the menu
- which in itself could be a bad thing as it offers no feedback - but
you do get the reverse colour on the menu items. Is this just an Apple
Safari thing? Would if help with more line height or just make the
problem more obvious?

>
Plus there is trouble when enlarging the text, the horizontal nav text
starts to disappear from the bottom up into white. This suggests you are
using over constraining heights. This happens in all browsers.

I decided that two increases in height were enough (though it seems OK
for 3 too), and the first thing to go I noticed was the text on the
buttons. These have to have a fixed height (~24px) to get the graphics
to work well. IE6 only offers two steps.

>
Frankly, I think you are getting lost with all this font-sizing and so
many line-heights with units. Might you might think of establishing a

Oh yes .. very true!

much simpler CSS sheet. Don't put any font-sizes or any line heights in
beyond the following not much more than nothing:
>

I started that about a week ago, and then put things back in to get the
effects I wanted, the menus to work and the fonts to look OK.
(Actually, I might actually be running them 80% too small in the body
(center panel) after someone elsewhere had suggested they were too big).

Your other comments are wise, but since it now mostly works and looks OK
I am very reluctant to go back to the start (for the third time!), which
isn't to say I am not opened to changing things where needed. Still
very much a learning exercise.

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Re: Complex Menus

Darin McGrew wrote:

Re: the clagnut hack
Beauregard T. Shagnasty <a.nony.mous@ex ample.invalidwr ote:

>No, it is smaller.

>
Or perhaps the net font size is larger, when the following is in a
user style sheet:
>
html, body { font-size: 100% !important }

Adding that to user styles, or changing his 62.5% to 100% using the
Firefox Web Developer Toolbar, really ruins the layout of the page,
doesn't it?

--
-bts
-Friends don't let friends drive Windows

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Re: Complex Menus

David Morris wrote:

But why should the figure 62.5% percent bother you

I do not see the need for the folly of taking my default size, making it
tiny, then turn right around and attempt to make it back to my default
size. <shrug>

"Pixel perfection" is unattainable.

--
-bts
-Friends don't let friends drive Windows

[David Morris]

Re: Complex Menus

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

Yes, my fontsize page is aimed at getting authors to not use pixels for
sizing - instead of percent or em - because of the shortcomings of IE.
But you did notice of course that it stresses using 100% for body{ } and
for content text. Or didn't that sink in?
>

Ok, so what I think you are saying is that *all* web pages should be
displayed with a font size of 100%, that is, 16px? I concede that
people should have the option to change a page to make it larger (so
that's what I did - I though you would appreciate that). But most pages
that I look at with a few exceptions such as yours, w3c and few others,
are generally around the font size I am displaying. I am not going to
try and defend the article as I don't have that much interest, and I
think it is only one approach which I happen to find interesting, but I
am surprised that this seems to be such an emotional issue. Are you
also saying that most web sites (such as the examples I gave in a
previous post, starting with Google working on down) are doing it
incorrectly? And is this the reason why this is such a touchy subject?

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

Re: Complex Menus

David Morris wrote:

John Hosking wrote:

><snippage[Thanks, John.]
>Aiming for anything significantly less than the visitor's preferred
>text size is rude, arrogant, inefficient, and mucks up the whole Web
>as people have to constantly adapt as best they can to each
>individual site just to read the damned content comfortably.

>
Is this some sort of threat? How odd.

The real threat exists with your visitors, your customers.

There is one thing that the average surfer does know. That is "how to
use the Back button." If someone is looking for a product, and Google
gave them fifty links to your and similar products, and if they arrived
at your site and couldn't read it, they would click the Back button and
choose another site. If they can actually read the next one without
jumping through hoops, they will purchase there.

From your competitors.

--
-bts
-Friends don't let friends drive Windows

[David Morris]

Re: Complex Menus

>Is this some sort of threat? How odd.

>
The real threat exists with your visitors, your customers.
>
There is one thing that the average surfer does know. That is "how to
use the Back button." If someone is looking for a product, and Google
gave them fifty links to your and similar products, and if they arrived
at your site and couldn't read it, they would click the Back button and
choose another site. If they can actually read the next one without
jumping through hoops, they will purchase there.
>
From your competitors.
>

No disagreement with that. It also has to look good. And get the
message across.

[Jonathan N. Little]

Re: Complex Menus

David Morris wrote:

Beauregard T. Shagnasty wrote:

Yes, my fontsize page is aimed at getting authors to not use pixels for
sizing - instead of percent or em - because of the shortcomings of IE.
But you did notice of course that it stresses using 100% for body{ } and
for content text. Or didn't that sink in?
>

Ok, so what I think you are saying is that *all* web pages should be
displayed with a font size of 100%, that is, 16px?

No, that *may* be 16px! Or 14px, 20px, 25px, 30px,... The point that you
are missing is

body { font-size: 100% }

Which means the basic font size of your page will be exactly the right
size that the user has set to comfortably read; not what you, the
designer, wishes. Who is more important, you or your customer? Bad
business model if you select "you".

Now if you, as the designer, find that

body { font-size: 100% }

is too big, then you should change your browser's default size, not
impose it on others.

I concede that
people should have the option to change a page to make it larger (so
that's what I did - I though you would appreciate that). But most pages
that I look at with a few exceptions such as yours, w3c and few others,
are generally around the font size I am displaying.

There are a lot of bad designers out there, so why do you want to and
one more to the list?

I am not going to
try and defend the article as I don't have that much interest, and I
think it is only one approach which I happen to find interesting, but I
am surprised that this seems to be such an emotional issue. Are you
also saying that most web sites (such as the examples I gave in a
previous post, starting with Google working on down) are doing it
incorrectly? And is this the reason why this is such a touchy subject?
>

Maybe it is your age. Never quite understood why my parents would get
so upset when I would shove something 6 inches from there noses to read
as a kid. Then, let's see it was about 45... Now I understand the
extreme frustration of not being able to see the directions on the
bottle! I want to (CTRL +) my world! But the label is printed and the
size is fixed. A webpage is not, so do not impose paper-restrictions on
the web, the web is *not* paper... Don't get me started on the other
paper-constraint usually *imposted* on web pages...fixed layout.

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO

http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com