jQuery Forum

Something like jdMenu? Is it necessary for it to be part of the UI?
Since a dropdown can be done CSS based (minus the js for ie6 fix). But
I could see an argument for it.
BTW - Shocked when I clicked on your blog too see you're from
Mansfield, TX. Former and semi-current resident.
Seth

don't know about inclusion in jqueryUI, but have you seen these
plugins?
http://jquery.com/blog/2006/08/02/jquery-suckerfish-menu/
http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/
and in a different flavor:
http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/all-horizontal-example/
also, not a drop down menu, but very cool:
http://plugins.jquery.com/project/lavalamp2

There is currently some old menu code somewhere in the branch version
that I did quite early on in the project, however it's been abandoned
for a while. If anyone fancies picking it up, it's a basic start.
Otherwise I'll probably be able to pick it up in early July and try push
it out.
Chris Jordan

A bit of self promotion here, but why not.
I made this, http://www.query7.com/making-a-slide-in-menu-using-jquery-video-tutorial/

Sorry I sort of abandoned this thread, but life just sorta got in the way. In answer to the basic question of "Why?" I think my argument would be that menus are an important element to most user interfaces and as such I'm surprised that there isn't one in jQueryUI.
@Seth (go Mansfield!): Yes. Something exactly like jdMenu. In fact I know that Jonathan Sharp is working on making jdMenu work with the latest jQuery (now that dimensions is included in the jQuery core -- and partly in the jqueryui.base or core).
Also if it was just CSS and such, then why are their several jQuery plugins for it. Also, what prompts this is that I wanted to use the jQueryUI modal dialog boxes, but doing so busted jdMenu, so I figure that jQueryUI should just have a drop down menu that comes with and is guaranteed to work with jQueryUI. I like the idea of having all my UI type stuff in one plugin (or handful of plugins downloaded under one banner -- jQueryUI) instead of getting them piecemeal and hoping that they play nice together.
If Jonathan Sharp gets jdMenu fixed up, I might suggest that his code could be used as a base for including a drop down menu system into jQueryUI.
@<span class="HcCDpe"><span class="lDACoc">Claudio: Yes, I'd seen all those other plugins, but I've also seen several plugins that jQueryUI makes unnecessary now (like thickbox as an example)
Thanks for listening everyone! Again I'm sorry for abandoning this thread for so long. :o)
Chris
</span></span>

On 10 Jun., 21:49, "Chris Jordan" <chris.s.jor...@gmail.com>

here is the link to the menubar:
http://www.protofunc.com/scripts/jquery/aria-menue/index.html

I'd be more than happy to donate Superfish if any of the UI team would
like to take it as a starting point and develop it further as they see
fit to make it more UI-like. It's currently very stable, well-tested,
and is jam-packed with useful features. Keyboard accessible,
animations, degrades gracefully, timed-delay, etc. The down-side is
that it does not support click-to-show-submenus - although I do have
an unreleased Digg/Flickr-style plugin for that, if anyone is
interested.
Just thought I'd throw that in.
Joel Birch.

Doesn't seem to work in IE6.
Too bad, it looks awesome in FF!

@Joel Birch
Your superfish plugin is realy good for most cases. it has a great
mouse-interaction behaviour. but in an ui-component menu, is a lot
more. for example keyboard accessibility should be provided by the
arrow keys, not tab. the user should be able to switch between mouse
and keyboard interaction. you have to provide manipulation
possibilities (append/remove submenu), checkboxes, radiobuttons,
constrainToViewport (or wrapping element), aria etc.
this is what i´m focused on.
it can be of value to try to merge both scripts to combine the upsides
of both scripts, but that could be very difficult.

On 11 Jun., 12:59, "Bart Hermans" <bart.herm...@gmail.com>

@trixta
Yes that all makes sense - I agree. Your menubar looks like it is
really far down the road to what is required for an application menu.
The features you listed above are awesome!
Just a note - the keyboard accessibility isn't working for the browser
I used to view it - Safari 3 on OS X. You did say it's pre-alpha
though. Apart from that, everything else seemed to work perfectly. It
seems to degrade really well too - although should the radio buttons
and checkboxes degrade to regular form elements so they are usable
without JS?
Keep up the good work - I'm really keen to see how you go!
Joel Birch.

All this features sound very well for the UI menu, the initial merge
could be focused to core desired features to have the widget soon
:-)...

On 11 Jun., 13:30, "Joel Birch" <joeldbi...@gmail.com>

@trixta and @Joel Birch
I've been working extensively with Joel's superfish, and noting the
very accessibility issues that Trixta seems to be addressing. Both are
great efforts. Thanks!
I've been experimenting with Superfish, and would like to suggest that
both efforts include a very key feature that most menus omit (but not
al do) :Variable width on the submenus. When working with taxonomies,
and other tree-structured data that is not navigational (and
especially dynamic data), the width of the widest item can vary
widely, resulting in some pretty ugly menus. And setting to the
"widest expected width" is not attractive.
The solution, which seems to work with superfish, is to measure the
List items in the next menu that is to open, and set the menu to that
width, so long as it is less than a new "max-width" property. After
max-width is exceeded, I think overflow on the UL could hand it.
I hope you will consider it as you move forward.
2) Another useful idea is to control the opening direction of
submenus. I have seen some menus do this in the past, but cannot
recall which ones. If the menu does not have room to open without
exceeding the right (or left) side of browser, it opens the other way.
Windows apps usually do this. Since jquery gives us the event info,
this shouldn't be too difficult.
@trixa... do you consider your alpha code usable right now, if we
accept the alpha nature of it, and expect a lot of improvements, or is
a total rebuild imminent?

@trixta
Opera 9.5 is doing something very strange with the menu styling. A
halo effect around all the elements. Never seen anything like it.

Hi Chris,
I'm currently the one who is meant to be working on menus and
toolbars, although, I can't say I'm really working much on them due to
other commitments. Email me be the end of the week, and i should be
able to prepare my ideas for you, and where I've been wanting to get
menus and toolbars.
Micheil.

First of all, I apologise if I am straying from the topic of this
thread too far. That said, I'm probably going to stray a touch further
still though 0:) but hopefully my comment may be of use to us
menu-interested folks anyway.
@tunnel,
Thanks very much for the feedback. I have done some work on addressing
your suggestions - here are the results:
1) Variable width submenus. I began creating a separate plugin for
this a while ago when this functionality was first requested. I hit a
wall and put it on the back-burner, but your prompt has motivated me
to finish it. You can check out a simple demonstration here:
http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/autoSubWidth/
and the heavily commented plugin code is here:
http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/autoSubWidth/autoSubWidth.js
This plugin works on suckerfish-style menus, not just Superfish. It
needs to be called prior to further plugins like this:
$('ul.nav').autoSubWidth();
or like this if you want to use Superfish with it:
$('ul.nav').autoSubWidth().superfish();
Please check out the code to see what options are available.
I have tested autoSubWidth with FF3, IE6, IE7, Safari 3 and Opera 9.5
and it works in all of them. However, I have only tested the type of
menu shown on the example page. Please feel free to report bugs to
this list and place either 'Superfish' or 'autoSubWidth' in the
subject line so my alert picks it up.
2) Dynamic positioning of submenus. I collaborated with Jesse Klasse
on a solution for this and our work as it currently stands - along
with a fairly detailed description - can be found here:
http://users.tpg.com.au/j_birch/plugins/superfish/supposition-test/
I doubt Supposition will work correctly with the autoSubWidth plugin
as I have not tested them together as yet.
I prefer to create separate plugins for these enhancements rather than
bloating Superfish. Please let me know if you have further feedback
regarding any of this - we should probably discuss it in a new thread
though.
Joel Birch.

Joel,

Thanks Dan, that's definitely food for thought. Nice to see the
problem from a different angle.
I wonder though, would your method degrade nicely? I guess part of the
reason I did it the way I did was to ensure that when JavaScript is
unavailable the pure CSS menu still looks perfect and has fixed em
width submenus. I get the impression that in order for your floated
list elements to expand to the longest list item those list items must
be allowed to horizontally expand freely.
In addition, I currently float the list items (despite that they are
vertically stacked in this example) in order to (if I remember
correctly) avoid IE bugs. This means that without an initial width set
on the ul, they would arrange horizontally (without JS and your method
above, that is).
Does that sound right or am I not understanding your technique
properly? Thanks again Dan.
Joel Birch.

Joel,

Okay thanks - I didn't think of adding the float:left programmatically
for some reason. I'm still not sure that the list item won't just
spring out to full width though - due to their display:block setting.
Or if I keep them floated in order to shrink-wrap them, that they
won't float along side each other. Although if they did that, I could
still detect the widest one of them... hmm interesting - I'll have an
experiment.
You are right about my method not supporting images (and form elements
and pretty much anything but straight text). Thanks again - your input
has been most valuable.
Joel Birch.

When I said "list item" in that second sentence I meant "list items"
(plural), meaning the children of the ul, which I considered removing
the float from - although I didn't mention that. Sorry if my responses
are getting less intelligible - I should probably call it a night...
rest assured I do understand the value of your suggestions, despite my
tired blather. ;)
Cheers again.
Joel Birch.

Joel,

Ye I am agrree with you Chris ... Menu should be part of Jquery UI.
In almost every web application, menu, dialog box, datepicker, etc is
part of the UI
yeah I think Jquery UI should adobt the one available on plugins into
it component :)

Hi everyone,
Menu is a definite planned component for jQuery UI, and I'd love to work with you guys
together on it.
Who's currently the most responsible for working on a Menu solution out of this thread?
I would like to brainstorm a bit (in maybe a new thread), about what's needed for a menu
component, how the data structure would look like etc.
Thanks,
Paul

The menu should be vertical or horizontal.
The top menu should either need a toggle, or be displayed inline.
The menu could have shadows, and a very strong css rules else it can
esaily break with other css in the page. Most of it should be done by
css, but some options should prevale, like toggle submenus or hiding
them with a timeout.
The option to animate the menu should be in too.
It must be fully accessible with the keyboard.
If I get inspired I might even make a small demo, but don't count me
in on this definetly: I'm busy atm.

2008/7/9 João Eiras <joao.eiras@gmail.com>:

For horizontal drop down menu you can use menubar which is a branch on github, (but not released with the standard version of jquery)