At last we have a web page menu code that can be used for any browser without any of its code segments being specific to any particular browser. I called the design approach of the previous series the Simple Layout Approach. I call the design approach in this series the Elaborated Layout Approach. In this last part of the series I give you a summary of the two design approaches. I also give you the advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches. Everything in these two series is my conception.
Concluding a Menu for All Browsers - Important Attributes (Page 2 of 4 )
The table cells have onclick and onmouseover event attributes. These events call functions in the JavaScript code passing the cell IDs and other arguments.
The JavaScript Code
There are four functions. The names of the functions and their roles are:
The dropDownMenu() Function
When you click a drop down button, this function is called. It displays a vertical sub menu below the main link preceding the drop down button you clicked. Before it does that, it first removes any other drop down menu or sub menus that were on the web page.
The react() Function
The background color of a main menu item and that of a sub menu item is brown. For simplicity, in my design the background color of a main menu item (in the horizontal bar) never changes even if the mouse pointer is over it. However, the background color of a sub menu item changes when the mouse pointer is over it.
When the mouse pointer goes over any sub menu item on a drop down menu, the background color of the table cell of the menu item changes from brown to firebrick. Only one bar of firebrick color can be shown at a time on a sub menu. The react() function is responsible for all this.
A sub menu item may have another sub menu, which would come out of its side when the mouse pointer is over the item. If the sub menu is not in the last column on the right of the table, then its sub (sub-sub) menu will come out of its right side. If it is in the last column, then its sub (sub-sub) menu will come out of its left side. The react() function is also responsible for this.
Remember that in our design any sub menu item that can produce a sub menu has the ‘>’ character on its right. Again, in menu parlance you do not really talk about sub-sub and sub-sub-sub menus. All sub menus, independent of their level, are referred to simply as sub menus. You can use the phrase sub-sub or sub-sub-sub when you really want to be precise. You will hardly have to use such phrases.
The react() function also makes sure that only the SPAN elements that are supposed to be displayed are displayed.
The toChoose(ID) Function
When a sub menu is displayed and you click outside the sub menu, the sub menu should disappear. This function sets a variable that is used for that control. We shall see the details later.
The removeSubMenu() Function
This function removes any sub menu (independent of the level) that is displayed. It uses the variable set above for this. We shall see the details for this function and the other three functions later.
I used Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Opera to test the complete code. So far as this series is concerned, Opera and Safari behave similarly to each other.
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