FAQ

1	Why are there so many scripts?
2	Some of the text in my submenu is longer than one line, but when it wraps it goes out of sync with the background.
3	I downloaded the script and put it on my page and I don't see anything. What's going on?
4	I have the navbar in the top frame of a frameset, but when the menus open they disappear behind the border. How do I fix that?
5	When a menu opens over a select box it shows through.
6	I've customised the script and now my page has horizontal scrollbars. Why have they appeared?
7	I would prefer to separate the main menu items by "|", but this was not possible... Using addMainItem("/","Home | ",188,"left",""); is not very good because the | is included in the <A> tag
8	I am attempting use images similar to your example under "advanced customizations". As you mentioned, it doesn't seem to display well in NS4. Is there a way to tell the browser that if it's NS4, not to show the images?
9	The script works fine on my computer, but when I upload it to my website I get an error message. I checked the error out and it was coming from the ad placed on the page by the geocities server
10	I've noticed that when you resize the window it reloads the page. Is there any way to prevent this?
11	I've put the menu on my page and it looks great in all the browser, except Netscape 6 where it's messed up / doesn't appear at all.
12	Can I use the menu links to open windows of a specific size?

Why are there so many scripts?

The script is split into smaller files both for ease of upgrading, and so that each browser only gets what it needs. Breaking the code up like this improves the efficiency of the browser's script interpreter, because it only has to deal with code in a format it likes; it also dramatically reduces the file size and therefore the loading time.

Some of the text in my submenu is longer than one line, but when it wraps it goes out of sync with the background.

If any of the menu links are too long for the width of the menu, then the text will wrap, but the script won't know this is happening. To get proper alignment you need to tell it where the line breaks should be, and you do this by using <br> tags in the link text, eg:
addSubmenuItem("","Sample<br>Library","","");

I downloaded the script and put it on my page and I don't see anything. What's going on?

There are a few possibilities:
• You may be using an unsupported browser or platform - see the compatibility chart to find out.

• You may have accidentally deleted vital quotations marks while customising the script, eg:
  var fFONT = "verdana"; is fine, but
  var fFONT = verdana; will produce an error.

• You may be using unescaped special characters in your link definitions. If they contain characters such as quotation marks " brackets [ ] braces { } or semi-colons ; you will need to escape those characters with a backslash, eg:
  addSubmenuItem("http://www.quoththeraven.com/","Quoth the raven, \"nevermore\"","","");

  Syntax errors like these will often produce the error message "exclude" is undefined

• You may have neglected to set a value for baseHREF. If your site spans more than one folder, you need to put all the menu scripts in one place and specify an absolute path in the script.

• Check that the scripts have not become concetenated while uploading: download them back from your server to a different location (preserving your originals) and open them in a text editor; if any of the scripts are running in one long line, then this is the problem. The solution is to re-upload your original scripts in binary, rather than ascii mode.

I have the navbar in the top frame of a frameset, but when the menus open they disappear behind the border. How do I fix that?

You can't. The pages of a frameset are discreet - frames are top-level objects like windows - so content from one frame cannot hang over the lip into another.

There is a fundamental problem with framesets, and I strongly discourage anyone from using them. If you use this menu you have no need for a navigation frame; simply put the script includes on each page, and any changes you make to custom.js will be reflected throughout. Furthermore, the menu scripts are always cached after their first use, even on html pages which don't cache themselves.

However if you insist ... it is possible to script a topnav in one frame and then send the menu-building or show/hide commands to another frame; Top Nav IV can do this.

When a menu opens over a select box it shows through.

Form elements such as select in all except the gecko browsers, and also input and textarea in ns4 and opera 5 and 6, have a z-order of infinity, and will completely show through.

However for internet explorer the script includes a select-element hiding routine that's triggered when any menu opens. You can control this feature using hideSELECT

I've customised the script and now my page has horizontal scrollbars. Why have they appeared?

Firstly check that no other page content is causing the scrollbars, and that the window is large enough to display the whole navbar. Testing on a blank template page is the surest.

Then there are a couple of unique circumstances where this might happen:

1. If you have menus which extend beyond the visible window, then horizontal scrollbars will appear in certain browsers - currently netscape 4 and opera - because in these browsers ther menu are pre-rendered onload, and invisible objects still take up screen space. Possible solutions are to move the whole nav, offset the menus either globally or individually, or open the menu from the right.

2. There is a bug in the mac port of Internet Explorer 5, which appears to add padding around absolutely positioned elements; such content which is also the full width of the screen creates horizontal scrollbars. I haven't been able to find a way of consistently predicting how much padding and therefore how much of a scrollbar you get in a given set of circumstances, although it does seem to be related to the width of the scrollbar itself. Suffice it to say that scrollbars are unavoidable with a full-width navbar. There is furthermore no way to suppress just the x-scroll in mac/ie5 - only complete scrollbar suppression is possible, which would not be very useful.

However it's possible to override the returned document width and define it yourself, thus avoiding these potential issues. This is documented here

I would prefer to separate the main menu items by "|", but this was not possible... Using addMainItem("/","Home | ",188,"left",""); is not very good because the | is included in the <A> tag

You can do this, but the vertical divider needs to be in a cell of its own, eg:
addMainItem("","|",19,"center","");
addMainItem("/","Home",188,"left","");
addMainItem("","|",19,"center","");

etc ...

I am attempting use images similar to your example under "advanced customizations". As you mentioned, it doesn't seem to display well in NS4. Is there a way to tell the browser that if it's NS4, not to show the images?

Yes - you can conditionalise any link definition, and browser variables are already built into the script. For example:
if (!ns4) { addMainItem("dropdown.zip","<img src='zip.gif' alt='' width=16 height=16 alt='' border=0>",35,"center","","Quick download",0,0); }

This would add the link for all browsers except netscape 4. For more information about link conditions, see the advanced customising guide. For a list of browser variables see variables from the sniffer script. If you want to build a fully cross-browser, image-based navbar then check out this tutorial.

The script works fine on my computer, but when I upload it to my website I get an error message. I checked the error out and it was coming from the ad placed on the page by the geocities server

There seems to be some sort of conflict going on between those two scripts. I did try downloading the geocities banner code to try and reproduce the error, but when the script is local there are no error messages - only when it's live. This suggests to me that it's related to a server-side process, and thus beyond my control.

It doesn't always happen - some people have used this menu on a geocities site with no problems at all. But basically I don't think there's anything I can do.

I've noticed that when you resize the window it reloads the page. Is there any way to prevent this?

Yes, in v3.0.2 onwards you can control the refresh with a variable in custom.js called allowRESIZE.

I've put the menu on my page and it looks great in all the browser, except Netscape 6 where it's messed up / doesn't appear at all.

Netscape 6 is particularly picky about incorrectly coded html, and since the menu is made of script compiled and rendered html, it is vulnerable to errors earlier in the source code; it's most likely to be something really simple, like an unclosed div. Try running your page through a validator; or start with a blank page with your customised menu on it, and add in the page's html in blocks until you find the problem.

Can I use the menu links to open windows of a specific size?

Yes. The technique is described here