Post by Captain Niobe on Jan 28, 2010 6:57:01 GMT -8
URLS:
slowdownstupid.niobe132004.net/crashes/
slowdownstupid.proboards.com (this site is in maintenance mode, and isn't what I need help with, but the issue occurs in the DHTML menu there too)
I have CoffeeCup's free DHTML menu builder. I was looking for a chained menu that I could use in the sidebar, since my website design is... uhh... slightly lacking in the fact I can't seem to figure out how I should add sections into the main page and still have it looking nice. So, the chained menu was the solution. Had trouble finding one that did what I wanted, until I get an email from CoffeeCup with some X-Mas freebies, the DHTML menu builder being one of them.
I made a menu that I like, got it looking good. Comes the code and it's huge, and I start running into some slight issues with it right then. I've got most of the display problems figured out, including altering the relative positioning on the code so it would display where I wanted it to (it's one of those codes which displays top left of the browser window, thankfully it had an inbuilt variable which allows a span ID for positioning).
First problem I ran into after repositioning the code is that it's a floating menu. Ok, fine, except the top level is the part I don't want to float, I just want all options to float, the top level is supposed to act like its own little table. I came up with a workaround for that using extra table cells with a fixed height so that it looks like the menu is sitting on the page instead of floating over it. (How do you prevent the top level floating but allow all sub-menus to float?)
Second problem I ran into, I tested the code on 4 of the 5 browsers I have, all work the same except for Opera. I know Opera is a pain in the butt to work with some codes on (when will the coding standards of all browsers become identical? *headdesk*), but I'm hoping there's a fix someone might know of.
The Opera issue...
The third issue I noticed on FireFox, as it's my primary browser, and I don't check in other browsers usually until the project is mostly coded up (the exception in this case was because I couldn't figure out the positioning and tested the code when I finally found the span ID part). This is the part that's really screwy, it's got me completely stumped - I don't know JavaScript of DHTML, my fortay is HTML and CSS, but I do know just enough of JavaScript to take a stab at fixing whatever issue arises, or altering codes to (sometimes) get a desired result out of it. Even with this lack of knowledge on my part, I would have thought I would have been able to locate at least the location of the error, but it seems to be a combination of things... Maybe...
The website page (first link)... I can view that in my FireFox without a problem, the menu is where it's supposed to be, but pop over the the fatal crashes page, and the menu pops out of its box, pushing to the left by up to about 10px (didn't measure... My bad)... On my CoffeeCup IE6-based browser, there is a slight push to the right, but I assume that's just because it's IE6 that CoffeeCup added to their HTML editor preview pane (IE6... FAIL!
).
The issue I see with my FireFox I initially thought was caused by the welcome table, because it only showed up after I coded in the welcome table - when I commented it out, the DHTML menu showed positioned correctly. But that can't be it, because the crashes page is fine with a WT and the fatal crashes page is not, also with a WT. A brand-new, freshly coded page makes no difference, the menu still pops out in FireFox.
Then I got to thinking it could be something to do with the scrollbars that appear when a page is long enough to push content off the bottom of the screen. That theory flew out the window when I came across a page on the PB forum which did the same thing and had scrollbars.
Then I thought it might be because of the lack of content in the right hand cell (invisible - layout is spaced with invisible tables and cells), meaning the height was being carried by the cell containing the navigation table... I thought this was it... Every time I had a page with less content in the right cell than there was in the left, the menu pushed out...
And THEN...! *dramatic music*
I tried it on my older computer, on FireFox... Had the same problem... But there was another problem... This is what's stumping me so much...
The error itself is exactly the same...
The pages it is occurring on are different to what it occurs on on my newer computer... O.O
For example, to test the "short content" theory, I searched on the forum for something I knew didn't exist, landing me on a "no results" page... On my newer computer, that page is where the error is... Doing the same search on my older computer gave me a perfect no results page...
Back up one step, to the page you search from... On the newer computer, page is perfect, on the older computer... THAT DARNED MENU POPS OUT AGAIN!!! *headdesk*
This is how it looks in FireFox:
I've been trying to work on this and iron out the bugs for the last 2 and a bit days, and I swear I'm gonna start pulling my hair out soon... lol...
I'm hoping someone can help me to fix all the problems, especially after the novel ^...
TBH, the floating bit I can live with as is, though I prefer to find a solution rather than just use a workaround...
This is the remote coding for the DHTML menu - it has to be something to do with that code, but it's so big (24kb+ on file) that I dare not look... It was bad enough going through the huge list of variables and editing it to get the menu itself displaying properly in all browsers (which included removing top and left padding, else you'd get the same width in yellow on the bottom and right in IE6).
Other than the variable alterations, that code is wholesale from the DHTML menu builder. That includes the commented out areas and fixes for Opera - I touched nothing below the variables (with a warning like what's in there - what newb would?)
I can't think of any other information to give for this... I have FireFox 3.5.7 and believe I have the latest versions of my other browsers (Opera, Chrome, Safari, IE8)... If the others aren't the latest, they're only 1 update at most behind, it wasn't that long ago I installed them...
Oh... If you're wondering, with pages like crashes and fatal crashes... SDS is a road safety site, or will be when I actually work on it a bit more... The crashes parts I'm adding in as a sort of study/reminder of things that can go wrong if you're an idiot behind the wheel...
Any help is greatly appreciated, if you can find me some solutions, I'll owe you big time...
- Niobe.
;D
slowdownstupid.niobe132004.net/crashes/
slowdownstupid.proboards.com (this site is in maintenance mode, and isn't what I need help with, but the issue occurs in the DHTML menu there too)
I have CoffeeCup's free DHTML menu builder. I was looking for a chained menu that I could use in the sidebar, since my website design is... uhh... slightly lacking in the fact I can't seem to figure out how I should add sections into the main page and still have it looking nice. So, the chained menu was the solution. Had trouble finding one that did what I wanted, until I get an email from CoffeeCup with some X-Mas freebies, the DHTML menu builder being one of them.
I made a menu that I like, got it looking good. Comes the code and it's huge, and I start running into some slight issues with it right then. I've got most of the display problems figured out, including altering the relative positioning on the code so it would display where I wanted it to (it's one of those codes which displays top left of the browser window, thankfully it had an inbuilt variable which allows a span ID for positioning).
First problem I ran into after repositioning the code is that it's a floating menu. Ok, fine, except the top level is the part I don't want to float, I just want all options to float, the top level is supposed to act like its own little table. I came up with a workaround for that using extra table cells with a fixed height so that it looks like the menu is sitting on the page instead of floating over it. (How do you prevent the top level floating but allow all sub-menus to float?)
Second problem I ran into, I tested the code on 4 of the 5 browsers I have, all work the same except for Opera. I know Opera is a pain in the butt to work with some codes on (when will the coding standards of all browsers become identical? *headdesk*), but I'm hoping there's a fix someone might know of.
The Opera issue...
The third issue I noticed on FireFox, as it's my primary browser, and I don't check in other browsers usually until the project is mostly coded up (the exception in this case was because I couldn't figure out the positioning and tested the code when I finally found the span ID part). This is the part that's really screwy, it's got me completely stumped - I don't know JavaScript of DHTML, my fortay is HTML and CSS, but I do know just enough of JavaScript to take a stab at fixing whatever issue arises, or altering codes to (sometimes) get a desired result out of it. Even with this lack of knowledge on my part, I would have thought I would have been able to locate at least the location of the error, but it seems to be a combination of things... Maybe...
The website page (first link)... I can view that in my FireFox without a problem, the menu is where it's supposed to be, but pop over the the fatal crashes page, and the menu pops out of its box, pushing to the left by up to about 10px (didn't measure... My bad)... On my CoffeeCup IE6-based browser, there is a slight push to the right, but I assume that's just because it's IE6 that CoffeeCup added to their HTML editor preview pane (IE6... FAIL!
).The issue I see with my FireFox I initially thought was caused by the welcome table, because it only showed up after I coded in the welcome table - when I commented it out, the DHTML menu showed positioned correctly. But that can't be it, because the crashes page is fine with a WT and the fatal crashes page is not, also with a WT. A brand-new, freshly coded page makes no difference, the menu still pops out in FireFox.
Then I got to thinking it could be something to do with the scrollbars that appear when a page is long enough to push content off the bottom of the screen. That theory flew out the window when I came across a page on the PB forum which did the same thing and had scrollbars.
Then I thought it might be because of the lack of content in the right hand cell (invisible - layout is spaced with invisible tables and cells), meaning the height was being carried by the cell containing the navigation table... I thought this was it... Every time I had a page with less content in the right cell than there was in the left, the menu pushed out...
And THEN...! *dramatic music*
I tried it on my older computer, on FireFox... Had the same problem... But there was another problem... This is what's stumping me so much...
The error itself is exactly the same...
The pages it is occurring on are different to what it occurs on on my newer computer... O.O
For example, to test the "short content" theory, I searched on the forum for something I knew didn't exist, landing me on a "no results" page... On my newer computer, that page is where the error is... Doing the same search on my older computer gave me a perfect no results page...
Back up one step, to the page you search from... On the newer computer, page is perfect, on the older computer... THAT DARNED MENU POPS OUT AGAIN!!! *headdesk*
This is how it looks in FireFox:
I've been trying to work on this and iron out the bugs for the last 2 and a bit days, and I swear I'm gonna start pulling my hair out soon... lol...
I'm hoping someone can help me to fix all the problems, especially after the novel ^...
TBH, the floating bit I can live with as is, though I prefer to find a solution rather than just use a workaround...This is the remote coding for the DHTML menu - it has to be something to do with that code, but it's so big (24kb+ on file) that I dare not look... It was bad enough going through the huge list of variables and editing it to get the menu itself displaying properly in all browsers (which included removing top and left padding, else you'd get the same width in yellow on the bottom and right in IE6).
Other than the variable alterations, that code is wholesale from the DHTML menu builder. That includes the commented out areas and fixes for Opera - I touched nothing below the variables (with a warning like what's in there - what newb would?
)I can't think of any other information to give for this... I have FireFox 3.5.7 and believe I have the latest versions of my other browsers (Opera, Chrome, Safari, IE8)... If the others aren't the latest, they're only 1 update at most behind, it wasn't that long ago I installed them...
Oh... If you're wondering, with pages like crashes and fatal crashes... SDS is a road safety site, or will be when I actually work on it a bit more... The crashes parts I'm adding in as a sort of study/reminder of things that can go wrong if you're an idiot behind the wheel...
Any help is greatly appreciated, if you can find me some solutions, I'll owe you big time...
- Niobe.
;D
, and I read something about an external DTD? I know DTDs are supposed to go into the head of a document, but then, so is CSS, so it opens up the possibility DTD might be able to go elsewhere, too... I may be wrong there, but... Something to look into, perhaps...