Microsoft Drop Menus

Anon

Hello,

I just wanted to know if it was possible to make drop menus like the ones seen at microsoft.com in PHP? If so, how?

mithril

Boogly Poo,

It's not possible to create the menus you see in the black bars (All Products, Search, etc.) in PHP. Menu's such as those are written in DHTML and are client-side. Also, I'd suggest you NOT do it the way microsoft.com has. DHTML is like JavaScript, IE interprets it differently than Netscape/Mozilla. The menu's on microsoft.com work in IE only. Check out Weberdev.com if you want to put in menu's like that on your site. Their's is cross-browser friendly and I think their code is downloadable (you can always get it using Show Source anyways). However, occasionally <gasp>Microsoft is good for something</gasp>. In this case they do a fine job of illustrating the pit-fills of relying on client-side scripting for navigation. Since their nav menus don't work in either Netscape or Mozilla, my nagivation within their site is crippled unless I use their browser (which I refuse to do). Client-side navigation using DHTML is great, but only as an add-on. Remember that DHTML is JavaScript dependent so disabling JavaScript also disables DHTML. Too many variables that I can't control for me to feel comfortable with coding all my navigation in that kind of model, server-side is better🙂 Hope this helps!!

Cheers,

Geoff A.Virgo

ashben

I have a decent looking menu system (a customized heirMenu from dhtmllab.com) at http://www.ashben.net

petrb

Yeah. 986 lines of javascript and it doesn't even work in NS6 or Opera.

--ph

ashben

You have a better idea?

petrb

Yes. Make your pages accessable to everyone, and reduce your total page weight to something less than 85KB. Beauty is as beauty does.

--ph

Anon

Hi!

Maybe it´s not that good coding (mixing html and php, dirty, I know), and not exactly what the question ist about, but it works:
<FORM ACTION="myscript.php" METHOD="POST" NAME="auswahl">

<SELECT NAME="mymenu">
<OPTION value="not selected" selected>Choose one!
<?php
$j=0;
while ($item[$j]){
?>
<OPTION value="<?echo $item[$j]?>"><?echo $item[$j]?>
<?php $j++;}?>
</SELECT>
</form>
(a problem: you have to click a submit-button, with some javascripting (yes more dirty mixing...) this problem could be solved...)
$item is taken out from a database, the result is a pull down menu...
The chosen item is in $mymenu in the page myscript.php

albin

mithril

Hmmm.....

I believe that peterb was refering to the menu's on microsoft.com, not those on your site. No need to get all upset🙂 I checked out your menu's and they're not bad, one minor trouble that I thought you might want to look at though. In Netscape 4, the menu doesn't integrate properly into the left border. It's horizontally and vertically offset, which makes it cover part of your page's text.
You might also want to consider adding a second menu within <noscript> tag's for those visitors who come into your site with JavaScript disabled. Just a couple thoughts🙂 Overall, a very good looking site!!

Cheers,

Geoff A. Virgo

Anon

If you look at www.motograndprix.com you can see dropdown menus that are cross browser compatible.

ashben

Thanks for your suggestions Geoff! I'm currently porting my site from ASP to PHP and would take care of your suggestions in the next major release.