General FAQ

This list cover general questions about the capabilities of UDM - if you have more specific technical questions about using and configuring the menu, please visit the Technical FAQ.

Questions

1. I liked the ability of UDM 3 to update the menus on every page simply by updating the global custom.js file. Is this not possible with UDM 4?
2. How is this better than a conventional <script> plus <noscript> approach?
3. Does the menu use any tables?
4. Why does it use an unordered list?
5. What is the CSS generator used for?
6. I looked at my page in Mac/IE5 and the menus don't seem to be there. Does the script support this browser?

Answers

I liked the ability of UDM 3 to update the menus on every page simply by updating the global custom.js file. Is this not possible with UDM 4?

No it isn't, because with that approach comes a loss of accessibility - if all the menu data is in external .js files then non-javascript browsers will see nothing at all. You end up still having to provide redundent HTML navigation, so you may as well make your menus from that in the first place.

But there is a half-way house - you can have only the top navigation bar in static HTML while the menus are generated from data in the custom file. This reduces the amount of HTML you'd have to copy-and-paste between pages - only the top list, instead of the whole structure. Please see Creating menus for more details about that.

But other things being equal, the best approach is to use server-side includes of some kind.

How is this better than a conventional <script> plus <noscript> approach?

The <script> plus <noscript> paradigm has a hole in it - it doesn't cater for primitive javascript browsers, such as WebTV or Netscape 3: they won't be able to process the script, but they do support javascript, so they won't parse the <noscript> either. They would end up with nothing.

But using static HTML with behaviors added in the DOM, the core structure is always there, so we ensure that every user-agent gets some form of useable navigation.

Does the menu use any tables?

No, the structure is a clean unordered-list styled entirely with CSS - it doesn't use any tables or presentational elements.

Why does it use an unordered list?

A list is much better than using tables or divs - <table> has the wrong semantics, while <div> has almost no semantics at all. A <ul> has structure and heirarchy, and is arguably the closest thing we have in HTML to the semantics of a navigation bar.

XHTML 2 introduces the <nl> (navigation list) element, and when it's implementable the script will be adapted to work with that as well.

What is the CSS generator used for?

It's so that you can generate a plain CSS stylesheet from your configuration file, and use that instead of the script generated style sheet. Then for anyone who visits your site in a CSS-capable browser but with javascript disabled, your navigation bar will still look the same Please see Generating a noscript stylesheet for more about that.

The generator program also has capabilities beyond this companion use - in fact it can create the CSS for pretty much any list-based navigation bar you care to design! For more details please see Getting more out of the CSS generator.

I looked at my page in Mac/IE5 and the menus don't seem to be there. Does the script support this browser?

Yes and No. Version 5.2 or later for Mac OS X has full support. However in Version 5.0 or 5.1 for Mac OS9 or earlier, the main bar is always visible but a horizontal navbar has no menus, because of serious browser bugs for which I couldn't find practical workarounds.

Please see the browser support chart for details.

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