Topic: Forum DropDown Menu markup

Hi,
It's just a detail, but it'd be better if the Maximum Security, Visual Therapy and Holding Pens cells were put in a TH tag instead of a TD.

indeed. I added it to the todo list.

what would be very useful too is, if the little dropdown would be accessible always - whereever the page is scrolled to and not only at the top.

here is a little example of what i mean:

http://www.embege.com/asylum/dropdown.html

Thanks for you input,
we thought about that for a while, experimenting with position:fixed and javascript.

But - and here's a (the) big but - what happens if you're on 800x600? Yes, the space to the left and right of the main content becomes smaller, and suddenly, that little arrow overlaps with the content. And I don't think that's good.

so long,

->Tyberius Prime

why not fix the space on the side and also put the dropdown-icon to the very left border?
would save some pixels.
a question of design of course.

hm... I don' think it would look any good if we glued it to the left side....

How would you go about always having a minimum space at the left side? Last time I looked CSS (except with IE's 'expression) didn't support something like width:windowWidth - 100px;. Or would you just set left and right margin, without specifying a width?

good to see you back, btw.

so long,

->Tyberius Prime

quote:

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Or would you just set left and right margin, without specifying a width?

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yepp, thats what i meant.
the image is 32 pixels width. so we could make the space between window border and table 36px width and we would have 2 pixels on each side if the image slides downwards.

Personally, I think that would be more irritating than useful.

In time of need, I can easily get to the top of the page

On the other hand, having that thing buzzing around and taking up space needlessly would be quite bothersome in the long run.

The margins wouldn't be the problem I believe (although I quite like the way they depend on the window's width at the moment), but personally, I'm not a big fan of those JS sliders as they tend to draw far too much attention to the slided image and away from the content of the page.

This one, for example, is really bad:
http://29991.forum.onetwomax.de/


If we had it stuck to the top left corner via position: fixed; (and perhaps made that behaviour available to IE through JS) that would be another story...

thats true and i agree.
another solution would be to have it not slided but on a fixed position like kuckus just said. 4 pixels from top and 4 from left.



(Edited by GRUMBLE on 09-14-2004 19:46)

I guess I simply don't see that there is anything that needs a "solution".

"fixed" jsut means that it still "slides" but we've changed the name to fit a semantic need....

It works quite well as is, and is very unobtrusive. If your need to get to another forum quickly is so pressing that you must have the menu always visible on your screen.....perhaps your prescription needs adjusting

(just my .02)

well....i guess i simply see that there IS something that needs a "solution"
making this thing sliding up and down would be just fine. in my opinion this lil menu is the most handy tool of the asylum. im using it all the time, and having it always in the top left corner of my screen would be very comfortable.

my two cents.

B | T | E | P | L

how about a keyboardshortcut that shows you the menu always at the upper left of where you currently are?

sounds like a good compromise

how about an option in your userprofile to turn it on/off?

but the keyboardshortcut would be cool as well.

How about Pos1 as a keyboard shortcut?

the first thing we learned in userinterface class is to never use keyboard shortcuts which are on the right side of the keyboard.
a user always feels uncomfortable when to press a key with the left hand which is on the right half of the keyboard.

how about 'Q' for "Quick Navigation" ?

though i still like the idea with the position:fixed a lot better.

@grumble: d'oh.... what does pos1 (called 'home' on us keyboards) do?

I was wondering what the hell 'Pos1' was

Now that I know, let me second kuckus suggestion =)
(unless, of course, he actually means to use it to pop up the menu. then he needs to be flogged)

flog me