Menus, Menus Everywhere

[Hawk]

I kind of agree with you Stoker. I'm not real crazy about the newest one myself.

I'm going to put this topic to rest for a bit and go back to the drawing board to see if I can come up with something workable and aesthetically appealing across the board.

Thanks for all your comments folks. It's greatly appreciated.

[Wolverine@MSU]

I'm at 1280x800 res. running IE6. Is it OK to upgrade to IE7? I seem to recall some bugs in it and complaints by users.

[Hawk]

Actually you might be better off upgrading to IE 8. I did and found it better than IE 7, even though I don't use it much. It is faster and more secure, plus it has compatibility mode in case you need it for some sites that don't work with IE 8 - you can revert back to and IE 7 type style rendering.
After looking at the css for that menu a little better I figured out you were using IE 6 or an earlier version. I can fix the way it looks but I don't have any way to test so I would have to depend on someone else to test for me, and that could make it just a tad more difficult.

I think I've got the colors straightened out for IE 6 (I changed the backgrounds from a color to an image, to give it a more rustic look) but the margins are going to be another story, although I think I got them a little closer. I also moved Trainmaster out of the RT3 list and gave it its own entry, eliminating the 5th fly-out. I can eliminate the 4th fly-out as well if need be.

If you don't mind, have a look at it now and grab a screen-shot and post it.

http://www.hawkdawg.com/index-test.html

It should look something like this now.

Click on image to view full size

BTW! All the rest of y'all have a look and let me know what you think.

[edbangor]

Well I like it.

But if my previous posts in this thread are anything to go by, then everyone else is going to hate it... including Hawk.

[JFMarvelous]

I like this one better than the others also. But, I , like others have trouble with keeping the flyouts open while looking through them. Can you make it so you have to click in an empty space off the flyout to close it? Seems I've seen this option somewhere before on adds with flyouts.

[Hawk]

That's a thought JF. I'll see what I can do.

[Hawk]

Can you make it so you have to click in an empty space off the flyout to close it?

I've been looking into this but the only options I've found so far is to use JavaScript and I don't want to use that on a menu. Search engines can't read JavavScript.

[Wolverine@MSU]

The flyouts don't work for me. IE 6.0.2900.5512.xpsp_sp3_.gdr........etc. Don't wrack your brains trying to make it work for my antiquated browser. I also have Firefox installed, which I have to use for some of our University pages.

[Hawk]

Well, you need to dump that antiquated browser anyway.
If you have Firefox installed why the heck are you still using IE, and riding the dinosaur to boot?
Do you have the latest version of Firefox - 3.6? It's a big improvement over earlier versions.

I did make a change in a couple of conditional comments that are needed for those old versions of IE, but without any way to test the changes I think I'm just going to blow it off.
I used to have IE 6 on my wife's computer but I finally decided to quite trying to write for those old versions of a misguided browser so I updated her computer to IE 7. I didn't go to V-8 on hers so I could still use it for testing.
I just finished up a job where the customer can't stand IE so I was given permission to write in the upcoming HTML 5 and CSS 3 (for experimental purposes ya' know), which doesn't work at all in IE 7 but works fine in IE 8. The whole site was built without the use of HTML tables but instead I used CSS tables. Much more flexible.

OK! I know. Far too much information and blabbering here.

[Silverback]

Difficult choice.

Just to be awkward I'd like to see both with the menu on the left because I don't like the menus flying out from right to left !

Any chance of a semi flyout where the flyout partially covers the existing menu?

as Rick Nelson who sang In Garden Party "You can't please everyone so you got to please yourself"

[Stoker]

How about having the menu be a circle in the middle of the page with flyouts in every direction?

[WPandP]

How about the menu gets released as a Firefox plug-in toolbar?

[Hawk]

Difficult choice.

Just to be awkward I'd like to see both with the menu on the left because I don't like the menus flying out from right to left !

Any chance of a semi flyout where the flyout partially covers the existing menu?

as Rick Nelson who sang In Garden Party "You can't please everyone so you got to please yourself"

Actually. I'm seriously considering a horizontal menu right under the header. That would give more room on the page, plus I think I can set it up to drop down on click instead of hover.
I'm just not sure at this point what I'm going to do.

How about the menu gets released as a Firefox plug-in toolbar?

Think Mozilla will go for that?

How about having the menu be a circle in the middle of the page with flyouts in every direction?

Now that would be a trick.

[proudcanadian]

Personally, I think that a drop-down menu would really streamline the front page and open up a lot of space. Just my on the subject.

[Hawk]

Personally, I think that a drop-down menu would really streamline the front page and open up a lot of space. Just my on the subject.

That's my line of thinking too.

[Stoker]

I think my vote would be for the top menu as well, especially if you can implement the "click to freeze" pop-ups option. Having the pop-ups branch when hovering seems to be the weak part of having pop-up menus, as they can slip away when trying to navigate your cursor over to them.

[KevinL]

My preference is for the new menu with pop up sub menus. It saves having to open full pages to navigate through the different areas. I think it might encourage folks to wander more and find new things because having menus "blossom" open instead of having to actually open a page lets you see all of the options.

Are you referring to something like outline format?

HawkDawg
--->Microsoft Train Simulator
--->Railroad Tycoon 1
--->Railroad Tycoon 2
--->Railroad Tycoon 3
------->Map Archive
---------->North America
---------->Asia
---------->Africa
------->User Tools
--->TrainMaster


etc? When you click on each submenu it opens another submenu with the choices, instead of flying out.

This is the method I prefer. The flyout menus, like Windows uses from the start menu in WinXP, tend to frustrate me as well, as if you move the mouse slightly in one direction you lose the whole menu and have to start over.

EDIT: I indented each sub-menu with spaces but they dont show up in the finished post. The spaces show up when I edit, though. I dont know how to do that.

[Blackhawk]

If you go with a top menu bar, the drop down submenu is nice (and maybe if needed even throw in 1 flyout) The one on http://www.gamesurge.net/ has the drop down menu and a few choices with 1 flyout from the sub-menu. (But I had to allow scripts on the page so it might be javascript) I saw a better example a few days ago of a drop down menu I just can't remember where I saw it.

[Hawk]

Progress continues-

I think I may have got something here that should work well for most folks.

http://paphalophagus.com/HB/

[Stoker]

That looks and performs great Hawk, good job. Are you going to implement this version?