Webmaster forum - Drop-down problems in Safari

Author

Drop-down problems in Safari

Tony

2005-09-26, 6:51 pm

OK - so I've got no hair left after trying to deal with this one. I can
find plenty of people talking about the problem, but no solutions. I
was hoping one of you guys may have an idea about it.

Basically, I have a simple drop-down menu on a site ( for a sample of
what I'm doing, see http://www.dslextreme.com/~tony23/dropdown.htm ) -
this drop-down works perfectly on the major Windows browsers: IE,
Firefox, Opera, Netscape - but is gets REALLY screwy on Safari.

The CSS and javascript is readily available at the same site, as
dropdown.js and dropdown.css

ANY help would be greatly appreciated. I've spent at least two days
trying to get this working, to no avail.

TIA...

Karim

2005-09-26, 6:51 pm

On 26 Sep 2005 13:01:47 -0700, Tony wrote:

> OK - so I've got no hair left after trying to deal with this one. I can
> find plenty of people talking about the problem, but no solutions. I
> was hoping one of you guys may have an idea about it.
>
> Basically, I have a simple drop-down menu on a site ( for a sample of
> what I'm doing, see http://www.dslextreme.com/~tony23/dropdown.htm ) -
> this drop-down works perfectly on the major Windows browsers: IE,
> Firefox, Opera, Netscape - but is gets REALLY screwy on Safari.
>
> The CSS and javascript is readily available at the same site, as
> dropdown.js and dropdown.css
>
> ANY help would be greatly appreciated. I've spent at least two days
> trying to get this working, to no avail.
>
> TIA...

Your best bet is to go to Apple's developer site where Safari developers
hang out. You'll probably get some good feedback from a few Safari gurus.

--
Karim
http://dotNet-Hosting.com - Super low $4.75/month.
Single all inclusive features plan with MS SQL Server, mysql 4.0 & 5.0,
ASP.NET, PHP 5.0 & webmail support.

Wÿrm

2005-09-26, 6:51 pm

"Tony" <tony23@dslextreme.com> kirjoitti
viestissä:1127764797.616113.127370@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

<snip>

> The CSS and javascript is readily available at the same site, as
> dropdown.js and dropdown.css

Why anyone would want to make dropdown menu that uses mainly JavaScript when
they can use suckerfish (google for it if you do not know it) menu that
works without any JavaScript on Opera and FireFox and require only little
bit JavaScript for IE?

Tony

2005-09-26, 10:21 pm

>Why anyone would want to make dropdown menu that uses mainly JavaScript when
>they can use suckerfish (google for it if you do not know it) menu that
>works without any JavaScript on Opera and FireFox and require only little
>bit JavaScript for IE?

Short answer: because that's what I'm being paid to do.

Slightly longer answer: Suckerfish doesn't appear compatible with some
functions that I have been asked to add to the drop-down menu. I've
tried, and it seems to break it even worse...

Ben Jamieson

2005-09-27, 3:30 am

On 2005-09-26 20:24:09 -0400, "Tony" <tony23@dslextreme.com> said:

> Slightly longer answer: Suckerfish doesn't appear compatible with some
> functions that I have been asked to add to the drop-down menu. I've
> tried, and it seems to break it even worse...

Any specifics on those features and functions? (For this Safari user)

Norman L. DeForest

2005-09-27, 3:31 am

On 26 Sep 2005, Tony wrote:

> OK - so I've got no hair left after trying to deal with this one. I can
> find plenty of people talking about the problem, but no solutions. I
> was hoping one of you guys may have an idea about it.
>
> Basically, I have a simple drop-down menu on a site ( for a sample of
> what I'm doing, see http://www.dslextreme.com/~tony23/dropdown.htm ) -
> this drop-down works perfectly on the major Windows browsers: IE,
> Firefox, Opera, Netscape - but is gets REALLY screwy on Safari.
>
> The CSS and javascript is readily available at the same site, as
> dropdown.js and dropdown.css
>
> ANY help would be greatly appreciated. I've spent at least two days
> trying to get this working, to no avail.
>
> TIA...

I had to download the *.css and *.js files and save them with an
added .txt extension to figure out what you apparently wanted.

Three suggestions that have nothing to do with your problem:

1. Add newlines at whitespace to keep lines shorter than 80 characters
whenever possible. That way, a Lynx user can view the source with ''
without half of the essential HTML disappearing inaccessibly off the
right edge of the screen. (Obviously not always possible as in the
case of long URLs but this (one long line, may wrap on display):
Item 1
displays as this (one shorter line, may still wrap on display):
Item 1
is easily read. (Until I edited a fetched copy of the source I thought
that the "Item 1", "Item 2" and "Item 3" (upper-case 'I') visible in
your menu were a rendering bug in Lynx showing bits of the first
sub-menu in random places.)

Aside:
Peeve #2847: Websites that indent 8 spaces for every nesting level,
use nested tables and then end up with 197-byte long lines with nothing
in them but "</td>" (without the quotes) at the end and almost
*everything* in their page is off screen when I view the source. Such
formatting can also turn a 10KB page into a 100KB monstrocity taking
ten times as long as necessary to download.

2. Make all of the submenus visible and then hide them with an "onLoad"
event trap or else someone with JavaScript turned off but with CSS
support would never see any of the sub-menus.

3. For those without JavaScript or CSS, adding something like this after
each submenu might tidy up the menu a lot (the "<span...>..."
untested as lynx doesn't do CSS):

<noscript> </noscript>

Your menu as seen with Lynx:

Item 1 [1] Menu item 1 [2] Menu item 2 [3] Menu item 3 Item 2 [4] Menu
item A [5] Menu item B [6] Menu item C Item 3 [7] Menu item I [8] Menu
item II [9] Menu item III Some stuff here Some stuff here Some stuff

Your menu as seen with Lynx with three "<noscript> </noscript>"
lines added, one after each menu:

Item 1 [1] Menu item 1 [2] Menu item 2 [3] Menu item 3
Item 2 [4] Menu item A [5] Menu item B [6] Menu item C
Item 3 [7] Menu item I [8] Menu item II [9] Menu item III
Some stuff here Some stuff here Some stuff here Some stuff here Some

--
``Why don't you find a more appropiate newsgroup to post this tripe into?
This is a meeting place for a totally differnt kind of "vision impairment".
Catch my drift?'' -- "jim" in alt.disability.blind.social regarding an
off-topic religious/political post, March 28, 2005

Tony

2005-09-27, 7:14 pm

>Aside:
> Peeve #2847: Websites that indent 8 spaces for every nesting level,
> use nested tables and then end up with 197-byte long lines with nothing
> in them but "</td>" (without the quotes) at the end and almost
> *everything* in their page is off screen when I view the source. Such
> formatting can also turn a 10KB page into a 100KB monstrocity taking
> ten times as long as necessary to download.

I'll remember that when posting code for review like this. I was
keeping the formatting the same as the actual application - which has
to be formatted a certain way for when I turn it over to the back-end
coders.

>2. Make all of the submenus visible and then hide them with an "onLoad"
> event trap or else someone with JavaScript turned off but with CSS
> support would never see any of the sub-menus.

The particular application that I'm working on will not be used without
JavaScript, ever. So that won't be a concern. However, the suggestion
may prove useful, as Safari displays everything just fine when the
menus are visible on page load. I hadn't thought of that connection -
thanks! I'll see if it works.