Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Topic: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows.. (Read 18576 times) previous topic - next topic

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Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #30 – June 25, 2013, 09:56:33 am

I only hate obtrusive ones, especially if they lag or bounce or whatever. Those drive me up the wall. Ones that are solidly positioned and styled fairly conservatively don't bother me, and I find them useful. And they're not in the middle of the page. They're off to the side of the page, clear of the content.

Anywayz I'll go with the flow on this, as long as if you decide to keep the old ones you make them work properly. If it says up, it should go up. Right up. All the way. Ditto for down. None of this traditional SMF stuff that forces you to scroll manually because it stops before you want it to.

.

Mind you, I really do think the traditional location is next to useless. I hardly ever use the old style, because they're hardly ever accessible. I use the fixed ones quite a lot.

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #31 – June 25, 2013, 10:05:06 am

emanuele likes things that stay there while the screen moves around (at least it's easier to point them when drunk

Seriously, I think as soon as Ant stops changing the theme, I'd like to try a more "fixed" theme with some elements dragged around the page as I already experimented with the moderation buttons.

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #32 – June 25, 2013, 10:09:08 am

Wotcha mean "more fixed"? More things that stay put? TBH I don't at all mind a fixed menu, and in testing with non-techy types it's been found that people are able to navigate sites faster if the menu is constantly available (which really shouldn't be surprising).

Then again, I have a 1050 high screen, and I've stripped the Firefox interface down so it takes up less space than Chrome's, so I have a fair amount of height to play with. Someone on a 1366x768 may feel differently about it.

Anyway, fixing stuff is easy, as is making it show on clicky or hover or anything else.

ETA: I could always try moving those buttons and see where they annoy Norv least. OTOH, its kinda fun being annoying.

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #33 – June 25, 2013, 10:35:55 am

lol

Yes: position: fixed.

Well, what I have in mind is always something "extreme" ( /me doesn't like to play with boring things), so fixed may be: menu, moderation buttons, page index, "topic buttons" (reply/add poll/etc), jump to, from time to time I think to a quick reply too (maybe a button in a corner, but that would fit only with an ajax reply of sort), the bar with the search, maybe something else.

Of course personal interpretation not to force on a default theme, but something I want to play with (and I started to play with it in my "minimalist extreme" (that at the moment is abandoned because of lack of time and a bit of interest, I have to revive it

), but reverted because the effect was not as nice as I wanted it to be).

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #34 – June 25, 2013, 11:32:42 am

Actually..having the top stays the same - which contains menu and linktree - possibly moving any pageindex up there - is a interesting idea for a theme.

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #35 – June 25, 2013, 06:18:03 pm

Hmm. I kinda like that idea, but it would take quite a bit of screen height to do it nicely. Worthy of some sort though.

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #36 – June 25, 2013, 07:39:29 pm

Ok, if the up/down buttons are bugging you, try this on your local:

Find:

Code: [Select]

#gotop, #gobottom {
	position: fixed;
	z-index: 9;
	display: block;
	margin: 8.5em 0 0 -0.65em;
	padding: 0 0.3em;
	height: 2.1em;
	border: 1px solid #bbb;
	border-radius: 7px 3px 0 0;
	background: #ebebeb;
	background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom, #ebebeb 0%, #c6c6c6 100%);
	font-size: 1.5em;
	line-height: 2.1em;
}
#gobottom {
	margin-top: 10.6em;
	border-radius: 0 0 3px 7px;
}
#gotop:hover, #gobottom:hover {
	background: #eee;
	text-decoration: none;
}

Replace:

Code: [Select]

#gotop, #gobottom {
	position: fixed;
	right: 0;
	z-index: 9;
	display: block;
	margin: 8.5em -0.1em 0 0;
	padding: 0 0.3em;
	height: 2.1em;
	border: 1px solid #bbb;
	border-radius: 7px 3px 0 0;
	background: #ebebeb;
	background-image: linear-gradient(to bottom, #ebebeb 0%, #c6c6c6 100%);
	font-size: 1.5em;
	line-height: 2.1em;
	opacity: 0.7;
}
#gobottom {
	margin-top: 10.6em;
	border-radius: 0 0 3px 7px;
}
#gotop:hover, #gobottom:hover {
	text-decoration: none;
	opacity: 1;
}

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #37 – July 03, 2013, 12:55:03 am

I had an idea for the droppy indicators (which I should have thought of yonks ago). Only make them show up on hover. D'oh.

This works well, if the button height and width is increased a little:

Code: [Select]

.listlevel1 {
	position: relative;
	float: left;
	padding: 1px;
	font-size: 0.929em;
	line-height: 2.5em;
}

and:

Code: [Select]

/* Level 1 Menu bar: link or button. */
#main_menu .linklevel1, .admin_menu .linklevel1, #adm_submenus .linklevel1 {
	display: block;
	padding: 0 0.6em;
}

With the indicator code simplified to this:

Code: [Select]

/* Top level subsection indicators. */
/* Comment these out if you don't want them. */
.subsections:hover .linklevel1:after {
	position: absolute;
	top: 0.8em;
	right: 0.7em;
	content:" \2228";
}

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #38 – July 08, 2013, 10:47:56 pm

Hey fun with media queries.

Some nutters (not mentioning any names) have been known to be obsessed with using the sidebar menu in an 800 window, and then grumbling that their favourite browser gives scrollbars on admin content at that res. Now you might figure that anyone who is bonkers enough to use a sidebar menu in admin on 800 res deserves all the scrollbars they get, and shouldn't grumble about it, or shouldn't be taken seriously if they do.

However, we have media queries now, which means we can do stuff like this if we want to (or more accurately, if it'll stop nutters grumbling at us)........................

Not sure if this is worth including in default or not, but it might as well get posted for discussion/bunfights..

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #39 – July 09, 2013, 03:06:53 am

Pretty cool I'd say.

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #40 – July 09, 2013, 05:11:32 am

yep, well done.. I like it..

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #41 – July 10, 2013, 04:08:33 am

Ok, couple of brainwaves.

Fer a start I now haz teh awesomesauce droppy indicators. They are #444 triangles underneath teh menu buttons, only appear on hover, and are hidden by the drop menu once that is opened. These look very neat, but still tell people there's a droppy there ('specially useful with click menus). Ok, that's one.

Second one is that infernal strong tag for the new PM indicator. That's a pain because it's handy to define strong tags as being slightly lighter color than standard body text. That inteferes with the menu's PM indicator, and makes for special stuffz just to deal with it.

So, clever idea: don't use a strong tag for the PM indicator. There's no need to. It doesn't really do anything. Don't say "Yebbut a11y!". It wont do anything for a11y, for two reasons. First, blind peeps can't see the text anyway, so unless they are actually reading that specific button title they wont know about it. Second, apparently the whole fuss about strong tags being better for a11y than plain old b tags is nonsense. Ditto nonsense for em tags as opposed to i tags.

Why? Because screen reader users have the thing speaking so quickly (you should hear them go) that most screen readers just completely ignore strong, b, em and i tags. They simply don't have time to mess around with different voice emphasis when they're going 300 miles an hour. So, we don't really have to worry about strong tags for a11y.

This means we can just use a span for the main menu indicator, which can have special css if you want it fancy, or can just be ignored if you want it basic.

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #42 – July 11, 2013, 09:52:58 am

Ok, here ya go. I'm loving these. The droppy under "Help" is related to this blithering over at GitHub.

I think this arrangement is much better use of menu bar space. It gets logout out of the way, without hiding it somewhere weird or needing extra markup and css. This means the main part of the menu is stuff people will be wanting to use regularly (like unread posts and new replies, etc). The "active" button background on the header collapse button gives a nice left/right balance to the top of the theme.

The rest is just other stuff I've been working on. Looks a lot cleaner and more up to date, IMO, and I've rationalised the css so that all buttons call as much of the same code as possible. Methinks the droppy indicators are now cool too. All css, and seem to be stable in all browsers we're supporting. Got the linktree sorted too, but you can wait to see that.

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #43 – July 11, 2013, 10:49:25 am

wow, that's really good, much better than before

Re: Linktree and Dropmenu arrows..

Reply #44 – July 11, 2013, 11:21:09 am

Thats a nice improvement to be sure

..... I think we should consider another title than 'help" for the new combined menu.