NorCascade - Cascading Menu - Update

[NormanRouxel]

Ooops. NorCascade didn't work on Netscape 7. Thanks Chris.

(Silly me had declared a function after it was used and all browsers except Netscape7 seemed OK with that).

It's fixed in the attached zipfile. There are no code changes from the previous version (just re-arranged things) so you can paste in your style and configuration parameters over these.

Norman

[chrismarques]

Thanks Norman,

It works perfectly well now,


Chris Marques
Chris@yosuchi.com

[harlequin]

hi norman, a little thing for some of our guys using the new cascade menu is can they have a varloc target thingie like in the normenu? is this possible?

reason is, one guy calls his normenu onto different websites, and in different places, so the vartargetloc was really great for him..

thanks..

steve q
harlequin domains

[NormanRouxel]

Not sure what you mean, Steve.

If you mean generate absolute page references preceded by the web-site URL then that's already in there. It's the congig variable "sitebase".

If it's to do with frames then I can't help. I think they're the spawn of the devil and stay well clear of them.

Norman

[harlequin]

i meant the TargetLoc variable that allows you to specify a very specific location for the menus on a page rather than using left=50 pix or top=nn

when you call the menu on a page you can then call menu id = targetloc position = relative etc...

know what i mean??

steve

[NormanRouxel]

Steve. It is done. Attached is yet another final version ;)

If you set the "targetloc" variable to an anchor name e.g. <a name="here" id ="here"></a> then the menu will position relative to that anchor. Not that if you use targetloc then you must move the 3 script tags from just after <BODY..> to immediately before </BODY>.

This is documented in pop_syntax.html under "Advanced Positioning".

Norman

[harlequin]

thanks a bunch..

steve

[chrismarques]

Hi Norman,

One more question, i thought Norcascade was meant to deal with cahing much better than Normenu but I am Still getting this glitch which means that my background image keeps on being reloaded on every mouse over...

Check what I mean by looking at

http://www.yosuchi.com/acatalog/act_catalogbody.html


Hope you might have one of thoses brilliant ideas of your s to sort this out!!!

Kind regards
Chris Marques

[NormanRouxel]

It's not NorTree or NorCascade. It's any software that uses Actinic's sectiontree structures to navigate. These generate links that go through the searchscript (ss000001.pl) in your cgi-bin. This means that Internet Explorer thinks that it's loading a dynamically generated page and thus everything is re-loaded from the server.

I've added a feature to both NorTree and NorCascade that strips out this ss00001.pl stuff and uses plain static URL's. You enable this by setting a site path via the config variables (or the NorTree config program).

However if you're using a Business site then this will break you out of being a logged in customer so may not be of use to you. In this case I'd get rid of any background graphics and use plain colour numbers instead.

Norman

[chrismarques]

Hi Norman,

I am not using the logged in feature yet and won't be doing so for the next few months,

What can I do to change that setting then?

Regards
Chris

[chrismarques]

Sorry to waste you r time i think i found it...

[NormanRouxel]

I think I've cracked it so that both Business and Catalog users get as fast a page load as possible. I've managed to detect the "bb000001.pl" type pages that logged in customers use and generate links of that type for menus on these pages. If the customer isn't logged in then static links are created.

An exception is for Business users on the search results, cart or checkout pages - these will use the standard Actinic SearchScript based links on their menus as it's not certain whether there is a logged in customer or not.

Attched is another final update!! There's one new variable "isbusiness". Set it true if running Business and false for Catalog.

Norman

p.s. I've also done this for NorTree and I'll post that fix soon.

[harlequin]

hi norman, newest cascade is great and i know you love to add features to it so.....

can we have a level depth to stop at, similar to nortree/menu ? you know, stop building menus at 3 levels ?

also, dont know if im missing a config variable, but is it possible to have norcascade display horizontally in a row ( similar to http://www.redeyefrog.co.uk/acatalog/Walkie_Talkie_Watches.html , rather than vertically like www.greenweld.co.uk/acatalog/ ) ?

"Actinic - Probably the best forum in the world....."

:D

steve q

[NormanRouxel]

also, dont know if im missing a config variable, but is it possible to have norcascade display horizontally in a row

That's what the firstorientation, secondorientation and suborientation are for. Note that you also have to alter the Style if you change orientation as the firstbreadth switches aspect to height if you set orientation to horizontal. Maybe I'd better write a GUI after all.

can we have a level depth to stop at, similar to nortree/menu ? you know, stop building menus at 3 levels

Fair enough. As you're nearly the only person (apart from 2 others) that's ever donated anything for this code I'll put it in. This will keep the features comparable with NorTree.

Norman

[NormanRouxel]

Here's the even more final version with an additional parameter "maxdepth". Set to 0 for full menus or nonzero for a level to stop at.

Norman

[harlequin]

nice one norman, and im sure we shall be 'donating' more very soon.....its got lots of our customers interested.....

the g.u.i. if you have time, will just put the icing on the cake for this one....

ps...the updates to nortree also make that really, really quick now....and the caching certainly of the little arrows is excellent, havent tried it yet with a background image which also was always an issue...this really is making my weekend now.....we got some new toys...

thanks again and again..

steve

[NormanRouxel]

The ultimately final update ;-) This one does away with the need to declare business or catalog type sites. It's able to correctly infer the type of site via the <Actinic:NOTINB2B> type XML tag - I'd completely forgotten that Actinic sometimes provides some useful bits of code ;-) .

This update is worth using as it minimises the number of page loads that use the old inefficient method. (Only cart, search results and checkout pages for logged in business users go the old slow route).

To install copy the norcascade_pop_data.js into your site folder(s) and re-read the new instructions as the bit of code that gets patched into Act_Primary.html and (optionally) Act_BrochurePrimary.html has changed.

Now if that's the JavaScript finally optimal, I might get onto that GUI after all.

Norman