I am an asp developer that just started to use dreamweaver mx - I wanted to use pop up menus...the problem is the items for the menu are dynamically generated from my database, can I combine that with the menu generator and if so how???

if not what is my other option...

Adina

Hi Adina,

Yes, this is certainly possible. The easiest way is to create a Dreamweaver menu with a few dummy items in it. Make sure you cover at least all the levels you intend to use.
Next, examine the menu, and see what you have to make dynamic.
Then create a recordset that retrieves your menus from the database, and generate the menu items dynamically.

Take a look at this thread: http://p2p.wrox.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6623 for more ideas and sample code.

Cheers,

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Thanks, I have tried that - but I ran in to two problems....first - if I ever go back to the pop up menu editor to edit this menu or even to a new pop up menu - all my asp code disappears....

and second it works with the first menu but not with the second one (which is using a different recordset to populate the menu...) and I am not sure why...any ideas...

Adina

Yes, that is correct. Dreamweaver tries to reconstruct the menu dialog from the code, so when you reopen the menu dialog, it will dump all your ASP code. That's why you should design and create the menu first and once you're happy, add the ASP code.
You could save a copy of the menu which you can later change, and then manually copy back the changes to your dynamic code.
You can also look into third-party (some of them commercial) menu solutions.

Not sure I understand your second question. Are you talking about two menus, or about one menu with different levels?
Maybe you should post the relevant parts of your code so we can take a look at it.

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Thanks Imar for your help - they work! I also figured out how to use the code to change appearances so I dont have to use the editor anymore - there is just one thing I havent figured out - maybe you can help me - since the menu is dynamic I dont know the length of the menu items, and the menu box is not expanding to fit the largest items. I know how to set the box width - but I want to know if there is a way to set it so it expand to fit the largest item on the list...any ideas...

Thanks

Hi Adina,

This is going to be tricky. The menu code that Dreamweaver generates expects the width of the menu as one of its parameters.

Since the width is used to perform a couple of calculations inside the mm__menu file, you can simply pass a 100% value to make the menu as large as necessary. Rewriting the menu to accommodate for this situation is probably not a trivial task.

Also, measuring string length to find out how large the text is, is not very easy. In .NET this is quite simple, but with classic ASP or PHP this is much harder.

I think the easiest way to do this, is to limit the size od the menu text column in the database to, say, 50 characters. Then calculate the average width of a menu item text with 50 characters, and use that as the width of the menu. Since iiiii is much smaller than wwwww you need to look at "an average string".

Not a beautiful solution, but it may be the only one you can implement in a reasonable amount of time.

You could also look into third party menus; menu they support this. I can also imagine that doing this in Flash is possible as well....

Cheers,

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

Imar,

As someone who knows quite a bit about Flash, I will tell you that this IS possible. This does require a bit of XML programming outside of Flash but I have heard numerous places that it can be done.

Ben Horne
Madison Area Technical College - Truax
3550 Anderson Street
Madison, Wisconsin 53704-2599


-------------------------
http://www.acidplanet.com/artist.asp?AID=290705

"There are two kinds of people in the world: Those who claim to be Flash junkies and those who actually are Flash junkies"

Can you elaborate a bit about this, and possibly give a code example?

How would you put "XML programming outside of Flash" to use to measure string length, or to dynamically size menu widths? Can you give an example?

Imar
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Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.