Menu "scooting" on IE 5.1/OS9

shacker · Post by **shacker** » Thu Jan 08, 2004 1:32 am

When the mouse gets anywhere near the menu in IE 5 for Mac OS 9 the whole menu scoots 100 pixels or so down the page and stays there. Bring the mouse back and it scoots down again. Quite spectacular, but not at all what I want

This does not affect any other browser I can see, or even IE 5 for Mac OS X. Unfortunately our organization has quite a few installations of IE5/MacOS9.

I may be hallucinating but I thought I tested this earlier and there was no problem... then after the holidays there was. Could I have changed some parameter that would cause this? Where should I look?

If there's no easy fix, what's the easiest way to do a browser detect for both OS and browser in very little code? i.e I'd like to so something like:

if((IE5)&&(MAC)&&(OS9)) ...

Is that possible?

Using build 5.37.

Here is a page exhibiting the problem:
http://staging.journalism.berkeley.edu/menutest/

Thanks in advance,
Scot

shacker · Post by **shacker** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 3:43 am

Bump.

Still can't figure out what's causing this. No theories? Is this browser / OS combination just impossible to use with Milonic? Is it a known issue? Anyone?

What if I want to feed the NS4 version to IE5/MacOS9? How would I modify the following:

if(ns4)_d.write("

Thanks a million to anyone with a clue about this. I've hit a wall. Again, the problem only exists on IE 5 and only under Mac OS 9. IE5 under Mac OS X is fine, as is IE/Win and all other browsers I can find. But the menu is unusable with this browser combo, which unfortunately comprises a lot of my users.

Using Version 5.0 Release Candidate 40

Thanks in advance,
Scot

Post by **Ruth** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 4:27 am

since no one has answered, these are just suggestions since I don't know why it does it. You seem to have all the calls inside a table cell, followed by a noscript tag...which for the life of me I can't see as causing a problem, but......You also have a top and left position listed in the menu itself so perhaps there's some kind of conflict there. This is the sample for putting menus in a table. Sorry, I can't give you anything more. Good luck.
http://milonic.com/menusample.php?sampleid=9

Maz · Post by **Maz** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 4:57 am

Take the menu out of the table, place all the scripts under the <body> tag and in the style above the main menu items add:

top=50;
left=30;

don't use position relative.
That will center position it on top of the blue sidebar.

Regards,
maz

kevin3442 · Post by **kevin3442** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 6:14 am

Adding my two cents...

Both suggestions sound good to me. It seems to me that putting menus in a table cell, particularly putting all of the menu code in a cell, can lead to some odd behavior (as the sample page Ruth pointed you to mentions). Since your page layout isn't complex, it's really unnecessary to place the menu in a table. For that reason, I'd recommend Maz's suggestion... just use the menu's built-in positioning ability to place the menu where you want. I'll expand a little on the suggestion... Take the following lines of code:

Code: Select all

<SCRIPT language=JavaScript src="/menutest/include/milonic/milonic_src.js" type=text/javascript></SCRIPT>	
<script	language=JavaScript>
if(ns4)_d.write("<scr"+"ipt language=JavaScript src=/menutest/include/milonic/mmenuns4.js><\/scr"+"ipt>");		
  else _d.write("<scr"+"ipt language=JavaScript src=/menutest/include/milonic/mmenudom.js><\/scr"+"ipt>"); 
</script>
<SCRIPT language=JavaScript src="/menutest/include/milonic/menu_data_student.js" type=text/javascript></SCRIPT>

out of the table and put them either in the <head> or at the top of the <body>. Since your Main Menu already has top=10 and left=10, just change the values to position the menu where you want (Maz's number look good).

That may or may not fix this fairy browser/os-specific issue. Unfortunately, I don't have a Mac in sight to test the idea, so I'll just have to resort to old technology by placing my middle finger over my index finger.

Kevin

shacker · Post by **shacker** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 10:58 pm

Thanks everyone for the responses and suggestions. The reason I had everything in a table cell was because that's where the current navigational include is located (PHP). Rather than search and replace throughout the entire site, I thought it would be much easier to have the PHP include the javascript at that point.

In any case, I just tried all of your recommendations -- moving the code out of the table cell and into the HEAD, or just below the BODY. Exerimented with relative and absolute positioning. Took the code out of the PHP include just for good measure. Used milonic's default data.js file rather than mine. Nothing works for this browser. It's just plain foobar.

My next mission is to find out what the timeline is for upgrading the remaining Mac OS 9 machines to Mac OS X. For now, I'll sadly have to return to our old text-based menu :( , unless anyone else has a brainstorm.

Thanks all for your assistance.

Post by **Ruth** » Thu Jan 15, 2004 11:44 pm

Just out of curiousity, two things..do you have an older rc than 37, just to check and see if it was working in any older release candidates, and again this is one of those "I wouldn't know why this would effect it but scenarios..." since it's moving for whatever reason, have you thought to set the main menu as followscroll="1" just to see if that might actually stop it from moving when you mouseover and only move if the window scrolls? Just a way out there don't know why but maybe such and such might work idea, since nothing else has seemed to do that.

Ruth

shacker · Post by **shacker** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 12:26 am

innkeeper - Don't have an earlier version handy, but I did try the followscroll suggestion just now. No joy, but thanks.

I learned from the sysadmin that the number of OS9 Macs is going to be diminishing steadily from here on out, so I'm going to move forward with Milonic. However, I would still be very interested to know if anyone has a suggestion as to how can a platform+browser detect:

"
What if I want to feed the NS4 version to IE5/MacOS9? How would I modify the following:

if(ns4)_d.write("
"

Thanks all,
Scot

tepidarium · Post by **tepidarium** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 6:00 pm

I have posted before on the issue that the menu breaks down in a combonation MAC 0S 9 and IE 5 or Netscape 4x...

I don't think the menu works in this environment.

Post by **John** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:00 pm

I'm a Mac user, but don't have anything as old as you need to test on. Sorry.

Note that you're quite a bit down-level. You're running RC37, and current is RC42 (with a lot more than just 5 releases in between).

shacker · Post by **shacker** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 11:35 pm

jgillet, my last test was with build 40. I'm throwing in the towel on this browser/OS combo. Sometimes it's just not worth it (though I would really love it if someone could suggest how to do the browser detect for that combo).

Thanks,
Scot

netsprite · Post by **netsprite** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 11:13 pm

Hi

I have been having this problem on OS9.2/IE5.1.

Unfortunately leaving it wasn't an option as Mac users are a signifcant user base. I was also sure I had seen it working before it started to fail.

In the end I found that the problem lay with the DTD reference at the top of the page. When I removed this and just started the file <html> everything worked fine.

It's a pretty odd solution - and not ideal as the page needs the definition reference to be valid. Does anybody have any thoughts on why this would cause the menu to fail in IE5.1 and before on MacOS?

(It works on OS X because this comes preloaded with 5.2 or above)

Thanks

shacker · Post by **shacker** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 11:31 pm

Very interesting netsprite! Thanks for the post. I wonder if we can find a different DTD that works, rather than eliminating it altogether (and without messing up the DTD requirements for the rest of the site). Please post here if you find a solution that doens't involve losing the DTD altogether.

Scot

kevin3442 · Post by **kevin3442** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 12:29 am

If you don't mind me asking, what Document Type Definition had you been using? And have you tried any others, rather than simply removing it?

Kevin