New Drop down menu

Please take a look at my site main page:

old menu using tables (index_old.html)

And compare to my work-in-progress:


a drop-down menu (index_dd.html).

Both of those are temporary, working files. At any point, my actual, live index.html might show either one. (Only the US Navy ship links are active.)

Any comments on appearance, functionality (let me know your browser), or other ideas?

Thanks,

P.S. There are two kinds of people in the world:

Those who know, understand, and find this incredibly useful.

And everyone else.

Comments

  1. dreggas wrote:

    hey commie,

    Might want to add borders on the menus when they drop down to “bring them out” of the page more, might also want to put a down arrow on each to show that they drop down etc.

    if you are going for a somewhat directory like navigation structure, may want to add arrows next to each menu item containing a submenu.

    Just my pro opinion :) I like the menus overall, very clean and neat.

    Posted 16 Jun 2007 at 5:32 pm

  2. commissar wrote:

    Thanks,

    I’ll try to figure out some borders.

    Posted 16 Jun 2007 at 7:16 pm

  3. Rodney A Stanton wrote:

    Is the fact that the only active line is US Navy ships another slap at the liberal I voted for or coincidental? I ask because at the War College in Newport RI in the 50,s and the 70’s they taught that since the Dark Ages no English speaking nation has won a war if they did not engage Ships of the Line. The 50’s prime example was Korea. In the 70’s they added Vietnam to the prime example list. Which is why when Gen Zinni drew up his plan for the conquest of Iraq 8 years ago it included two (2) battleships to support 2 Marine divisions. This would have facilitated the killing of 500,000 Iraqi men in uniform in 6 months. Which in turn would have led to the surrender of Iraq (something that to this date has not happened) and the subsequent peaceful introduction of an America friendly; government. You would think Rummy – being a 4 striper – would have understood this; except he was a reserve officer and probably never went to War College.
    Or were you just testing me to see if I understood the significance of this fact?

    Of course I think none of the morons in the current administration ever paid any attention in their history classes.

    Posted 16 Jun 2007 at 9:55 pm

  4. rho wrote:

    I’ve never been a big fan of drop-down menus on Web sites. They’re very hard to get right cross-platform, and they don’t always work well. They also tend to assume a familiarity and dexterity that isn’t extant in the Web population at large.

    That said, it works for me, and I could use it. Still don’t like it, though. Optimize for scanning, rather than scrubbing. By which I mean the mouse is a poor substitute for the eyeball.

    Posted 16 Jun 2007 at 10:40 pm

  5. commissar wrote:

    rho,

    I was thinking about leaving a link in to the old index page, “traditional, table-layout menus here.” … something like that.

    What do you mean “optimize for scanning (eyeballs)?” Do you mean show as much content as possible as high up the navigation tree as possible? (”high?” … maybe I mean “low.” I mean whichever is closer to, and visible from, the main page, without any mouseovering.)

    Posted 16 Jun 2007 at 11:04 pm

  6. Redhand wrote:

    since the Dark Ages no English speaking nation has won a war if they did not engage Ships of the Line.

    Rodney A Stanton, surely you jest. You just can’t be serious about this, can you?

    If your comment is an attempt at dry humor, it backfires.

    Posted 17 Jun 2007 at 12:36 am

  7. rabit wrote:

    Works fine for me and I’m running the awesomely fast but still unstable Safari for Windows.

    Speaking of WWII warships, my grandpa was on the U.S.S. Saratoga when it got hit by a torpedo right after the attack on Pearl Harbor, several floors directly below from where he was in the torpedo room. He also told me about how he progressed in rank very quickly after he volunteered that he could upgrade the radar system on the ship, which he promptly did, leading a small team over a couple of days.

    One of the most interesting stories he told me was about how he had tried to warn Joe Kennedy Jr. and others not to continue with the so-called Aphrodite mission, because the wiring behind the arming panel was completely wrong. His superiors threatened him with a court-martial if he ever brought his concerns to anyone else or tried to fix it himself. My grandfather was one of the very last people to see Joe Kennedy Jr. alive as he watched him board the plane.

    Several books have been written about it with varying degrees of accuracy, but one thing most probably don’t get was the fact that the mission really wasn’t of any major strategic benefit except to help a would-be presidential campaign. Of all the Kennedy brothers, Joseph was the one groomed to be president.

    Posted 17 Jun 2007 at 4:57 am

  8. rabit wrote:

    torpedo room?? I meant radio room. :)

    Posted 17 Jun 2007 at 4:58 am

  9. rho wrote:

    Readers are generally pretty good at scanning a page really quickly to find what they’re looking for, so long as it’s visible. Your table-based layout is fine–a good example of gathering a lot of information in an visually easy to parse layout.

    (You could do the same thing with ordered lists, except now people have to scroll down.)

    If you hide information in menus, people don’t know what to look for except by rolling-over each pulldown. This is less of a problem with a clearly-delineated set of data, but few things are so cut-and-dried.

    Also of note is mismousing ends up with the user losing the menu. Say, for example, they mouse too far over to the right. Now their menu is gone, and they have to go back and look for it again. That happens quite a bit to even me, and I’m pretty dextrous.

    Posted 17 Jun 2007 at 11:27 pm

  10. commissar wrote:

    All,

    Can anyone help with the font spacing of the content text (not the menu items)? Look at index_old. See how nicely the letters (and maybe even the lines) are spaced. Very readable. :)

    Now the new index. It’s all scrunched together. :(

    I’m using a simple css style template. See file called pstyle.css.

    For the new index page, I used the “Suckerfish” drop-down template, so a lot of the code isn’t mine. But, but, but … nowhere, in any of the specs is font spacing addressed. So why in Hell is it different????? Grrrr!

    (Thanks to all for your comments on this, very helpful.)

    Update    : I think I’m getting somewhere, by tweaking the “content” div on the internal style definition. I’d still like to know “why,” but I am pretty sure I can make it look the way I want.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 8:46 am

  11. Dreggas wrote:

    Commie,

    Usually if DIV’s have their own ID or CLASS attribute they are considered self contained and only use the styles assigned to them by the styles for the ID or CLASS name.

    It’s the screwy way that styles are inherited in HTML itself. For instance you can set the body style to be one thing, then creat a table, give it a name and style all it’s own and it will ignore the outer styles, in most cases.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 10:02 am

  12. commissar wrote:

    Yeah, I am working on the content DIV right now.

    I can tweak the line height. (That actually was a big part of the cramped look.)

    But on letter spacing, I can’t re-create the old spacing, which I am arbitrarily defining as “just right.” I am trying px, em, cm, and % values. But so far, they all give either too much spacing or too little.

    Which of those (px, em, cm, or %) have you found to be more flexible, most adjustable.

    BTW, I am testing in IE. (While I use FF, the way FF caches the URLs drives me mad during these tweakings.) Whatever it’s other drawbacks, IE renders a fresh, current version after every tweak.

    So, when I get it right in IE, I will double check in FF.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 10:43 am

  13. Dreggas wrote:

    for letter spacing I tend to use “px”. Usually the normal spacing is fine.

    If you want everything you ever needed to know about HTML quick-book. Try here. It’s the w3c’s online tutorial site (The w3c is responsible for internet standards and HTML in general). It’s handy and has information on nearly every web language.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 11:25 am

  14. commissar wrote:

    How about if I put the banner below the nav bar?

    Like this?

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 2:22 pm

  15. Dreggas wrote:

    that actually looks pretty good. Personally I would try and line it up with the top of the window and the left side of the window, without the margins, while keeping margins for the rest of the page. It would look more “windowed” then.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 3:37 pm

  16. commissar wrote:

    Dreggas,

    Awesome! it’s getting real web 2.0 now. :)

    And still renders nicely in FF and IE.

    With the nav bar way up, and all the way to the left, I was able to increase the padding of the nav boxes, which looks better.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 4:11 pm

  17. Dreggas wrote:

    Sweet, glad to hear it’s working out for you.

    Posted 18 Jun 2007 at 4:41 pm

  18. Dreggas wrote:

    Commie,

    I see I have a message from you (I assume it is anyway since it references CSS). I can’t check that address here at work but will when I get home. :D

    Posted 19 Jun 2007 at 3:03 pm

  19. commissar wrote:

    Dreggas,

    Yep. Thanks. A whole rats-nest of CSS confusion. :)

    Posted 19 Jun 2007 at 3:25 pm

  20. Dreggas wrote:

    LOL, yeah it can become a PITA quickly.

    Question what program do you use to write your code in?

    Posted 19 Jun 2007 at 4:07 pm

  21. commissar wrote:

    It’s a mixture, but generally, I use a text editor.

    My preference is an ‘enriched text editor’ like CuteHTML. But they started charging for it. :(

    So, I’ve recently used Mozilla Composer, both in its WYSIWYG and text-editor interface.

    And, when I need to (like at work) I sometimes just use Notepad.

    Or I text-edit the raw HTML on my server.

    Posted 19 Jun 2007 at 4:31 pm

  22. Dreggas wrote:

    Well first of all props to you for not using a WYSIWYG, at least not completely, most use FrontPage 2000 or some junk.

    Long story but I am one who came from the Notepad days of web editing so to me it’s cheating if you can’t write the HTML by hand.

    If you don’t mind dropping a little bit of money for a solid program that does code as well as regular text editing I highly recommend Editpad Pro. Granted it’s $50 but it’s extremely useful. Not only does it do the markup coloring for various programming languages but there is the ability to add other templates for doing the coloring as well.

    Posted 19 Jun 2007 at 4:50 pm

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