Solo & blueteen:

As the upgrade on my barryc.net test site went OK, I tried upgrading my live site, even though the MM 1.8 menus are available only to a limited number of people so far. I had a strange experience.

I backed up the existing tables & the multiMenu folder as suggested by Solo, uninstalled the module then reinstalled. I then restored the old db tables. Everything seemed to go OK except that I lost my blocks. The content was there when I viewed the site map.

I then remade my blocks, using switch vertical. These initially seemed OK. I noticed that you have removed the old <include> method to place a menu in the top nav bar, so I decided to switch temporarily back to my theme.html in which the the top nav links are hard coded. There is no other difference in the file except for the replacement of the <include> statement with the hard coded links.

After I did that my switch vertical blocks no longer worked. The block title was visible, but no main file or permanent sublinks were. Changing the menu type to some of those at the bottom of the list of types in block setup allowed them to work (e.g. drop-down worked). I tried uninstalling multiMenu again, then re-installed it, but the menu blocks still did not work.

I then uninstalled and reinstalled the previous version. I again lost the blocks, but re-configured them, and the switch vertical works.

I really don't know what the basis for this is. I will try again on Sunday and if it happens again I will give blueteen access to look at it. This is just to let you know that something odd happened.

blueteen, I guess I really am going to have to work out the css for the new method of creating top nav blocks

Barry

It should be that easy. If you are using 2.2.X and you click on the Extended Profiles link, you should see your profile and a link above it to change password. There is also a submenu under Extended profiles. I've tested it logged on as an ordinary user and it works.

Barry

Done. See my PM. PHP debug is still on, by the way.

You either stay up very late, or get up very early

Barry

I followed this procedure on my test site, barryc.net. I backed up the tables multiMenu01-08 and multiMenu_counter and I copied the mm folder to my local machine. I then deactivated and uninstalled the module, deleted the multiMenu folder from the server, copied the new one, then installed it. It is installed and I can access the config page and admin page with the links to the various menus. Only mM08 contains data. However, when I try to access the index page (site map) I get a blank page. PHP error is:

Parse error: parse error, unexpected ')' in /home/barrycne/public_html/modules/multiMenu/include/multimenu.php on line 68

Therefore I haven't tried to restore the old mySQL files.

Any comments?

Barry

Sure, barryc.net is just a test site, so no harm can be done.

Also, I just realized that I can be very stupid. I didn't really notice that the path/table choice in prefs was related to how the menu was generated in the theme, even though it plainly says it. When I choose path rather than table, the top menu from the theme looks good. I will look forward to seeing that tip. The theme's code is old, I guess, and I'm not a good enough coder to update it properly.

Barry

I have PMed you with username and password to FTP to my themes folder on barryc.net. It is the same one I use on my live site, aka.org.

I see that you created a block for MM05 and, yes, the menu looks fine in a block. The problem occurs for me only when I try to insert the code for the menu in my theme. The {alt} tags do work in blocks. But look now at the horizontal menu at the top of the page. The {alt} tag and its text appear in the menu.

By the way, you can log onto www.aka.org with user name blueteen and the password I gave you for FTP. You will see the menu system I have set up using MM 1.8 for my live site. The existing Main Menu is also still visible, as I won't go live with the MM version until the final 1.8 is released. I made a special group for a few people to evaluate the "new look menus". It will give you an idea of what I've done. Everything is working well except for my little spacing problem with the horizontal menu in the theme.

If you do log on, look at the Site Menu and you'll see what I mean about the header not showing in the last column. It should have a header "AKA Programs".

Regards,

Barry

Here's another thing that I just noticed that might be a bug. I have several menus operational, namely mm01,02,03,04,05,06, 08. 01, 02, 03, 06 and 08 are all set in prefs to show in the index page (i.e. the site map). The header info for menus 01, 02, and 03 show (with the name I've set and the edit icon). The header does not show for menus 06 and 08. I temporarily turned on all the menus to show in the index page and the headers all show correctly. When I again turned off 04, 05, 07 the header for 06 no longer shows. It seems that if one menu is set to not show, those after it lose the header.

Barry

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.html

Below is a similar menu using MM 1.8, with user not logged on.

http://www.barryc.net/menu_MM18.html

Here 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 <td></td> 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.html

You 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

One more "problem" that I'd like to ask help on. This is not a bug, but just an issue with formatting horizontal menus to be included in the theme.html file.

I have inserted the correct code and set up MM05 to show in my theme, and it does so. The problem I'm having is getting the correct formatting. If I am seeing correctly how it works, MM creates a table that is inserted where the line of code is placed. The problem for me is getting the spacing of those tables to be appropriate. Link names are spread across the width of the window. I would prefer them to be clustered together in the center of the table. This becomes more of a problem if one has some menu items that are visible only to select groups, so that the number of menu items appearing at the top of the page can vary. Ideally I'd rather just have the links created without the table structure, so that I could insert them within an existing table cell. This would also elminate the "dead space" below the menu items that is created by the inserted table.

I've played with theme/multimenu.php to try to influence the formatting of the table, but with little luck. You can see my best effort so far at a MM horizontal array of links on barryc.net. Here I've put <div align="center"><div> around each menu item but left multimenu.php alone.

The effect I'm trying to mimic can be seen on www.aka.org. These are hard coded links all within one <td></td>.

I suspect that Solo and blueteen are tired of hearing from me and I apologize for being a nuisance. I realize that they are close to finalizing this version of MM. However, if anyone can suggest a method to achieve what I want I'd be very grateful.

Barry Cooper

Thanks. I'll probably wait until the release version to try this, but I appreciate the indication of the file names and where to find them.

Barry