You guys are great! I don't know what ordinary XOOPS users like myself would do without you.
On barryc.net (my test site) and aka.org (my live site) the top menu bars that are positioned between the header box and the main content, are dynamically generated by MM 1.8. You can see these even when not logged on, but you can't see the MM 1.8 menus on the left as they are visible only to webmaster at present.
The visibility of items in the top menu bar, based on group membership, works well. I think this is a HUGE feature for MM 1.8. On our site, we have items, such as voting, that should be immediately visible, but only to club members.
The problem I'm having is simply one of spacing. If you look at barryc.net you will see what the menu looks like with the code inserted into a table cell such that it appears between the upper and lower blue-lined boxes. The problem is partly due to the fact that mm/theme/multimenu.php calculates cell width based on the number of items (i.e. cells). The items are also spread across the full width of the window.
Here is the original header menu from aka.org. It was hard coded into a single table cell with space-bullet-space separating the items. Note the even spacing of items and bullet spacers. This is what I'm trying to mimic using MM 1.8 dynamic menus.
http://www.barryc.net/menu_orig.htmlBelow is a similar menu using MM 1.8, with user not logged on.
http://www.barryc.net/menu_MM18.htmlHere I have changed theme/multimenu.php to use cell widths of "auto" rather than calculated widths. This seems better for variable length menu items. I have also added a
| on either side of the menus (in multimenu.php) to act as padding. Finally, I entered Category type menu items containing only space-bullet-space to act as separators. You can see that the spacing is not ideal.
Below is the same thing with user logged on:
http://www.barryc.net/menu_MM18_logged.htmlYou can see more menu items and it looks reasonable, except that the spacing between menu items is not quite right.
What I think would work well is if MM 1.8 generated a table containing the menu items using auto width cells and including a spacer (bullets or |) between cells. This should produce even spacing. I would like to see the items centered such that they appear "clustered" in the center of the horizontal menu. For example, imagine that my header had 3 items for anon users and 7 for registered users. I'd like to see the 3 items for anon centers as a centered group in the header bar. Then, when the user logs on, 7 items would appear, also centered, all these separated by the spacer. That is, the centered menu would expand, leaving an even amount of space at each end.
I realize that there may be differences between themes that affect this. In my case the code is inserted into a table cell. That might not always be the case.
One other thing: adding {alt} with text after a menu item name does not seem to work when the menu is displayed as a horizontal menu via one's theme. The {alt}Text appears in the menu on the page. If one doesn't include an {alt} statement, a pop up box does appear on mouse over, holding the same text as the menu name.
I hope all this clarifies what I am getting at re menus. I apologize for the long post, but I wanted to make sure I explained carefully.
Barry
