Calling Norman - NorTree Question

[imis]

Hi,

Thanks for a great utility Norman and a great price

I know that you don't provide support and understand if you are too busy to answer but we'd like to suppress some sections from being displayed in NorTree. Up to now we've done this by manually altering the Act_section_tree_names.js file but wondered if you could point us in the correct direction to automate this within NorTree? The sections would all be called "dummy" if that makes it any easier.

Many thanks for any help you can offer.

Regards

IMIS

[NormanRouxel]

The code that builds the menu is in nortree_menu_create.js

It should be possible to skip certain sections from being included but it isn't trivial.

If you have a JavaScript programmer (who can understand recursive code - for that's what builds the menu) then I'd use them. Otherwise you'd have to contact me by e-mail for a quote.

I've attached a modified version of that routine (from a much older version - so don't use it) that skips certain 1st level sections. It might help you get there.

Norman

[Jan]

I did this on my site by hardcoding the name of a section I didn't want to include into the pl file - there is a bit of code somewhere that adds the section name to a tree and I added an if statement into the script (if name <> 'free software') - I don't do it anymore so can't say more than I have.

Norman : as an aside, one of my customers was asking about having a popup list of products today, would it be possible to add a product level to norcascade so that people could select actual products rather than just sections?

Many thanks,

[imis]

Many thanks for sparing the time to reply Norman and for the pointers.

Much appreciated.

IMIS

[imis]

Thanks to you as well Jan.

This is certainly another approach we will consider.

IMIS

[NormanRouxel]

one of my customers was asking about having a popup list of products today, would it be possible to add a product level to norcascade so that people could select actual products rather than just sections

Actinic only generates the Section List automatically. There's no way to get the product list as it stands.

This would require a separate program that generates a product-level list (probably a JavaScript array structure - with a note of the section ID they belong in) from the Actinic Database. This list would need uploaded by Actinic to the server.

NorTree++ could then interrogate that list as well as the section and generate additional menu entries.

Not a trivial excecise and one that I've no need off so I'm not going to do this for free.

However all the source of the NorTree JavaScript code is there so anyone else who fancies a week or two of analysis, design, coding, documenting, debugging, testing and integration with all variants and versions of Actinic (for no reward whatsoever except a huge amount of future support effort) has a starting point.

Norman

Norman

[Jan]

Thanks Norman - BTW I wasn't asking you to do this for free, you do too much for free already, I just wanted to know whether it was possible. I think that it is a nice idea but would only work in stores with a limited number of products anyway because the preload time for the tree structure could become hugh. You can achieve this in a way using Nortree already because you can put each product into it's own section.

Regards,

[imis]

Hi Norman,

Just to let you know that we figured this out - thanks again for pointing us in the right direction.

For those who are interested, the sections we wanted to hide were on the second level, called dummy and always situated at the bottom:

toplevel1
- sub1
- sub2
- dummy
toplevel2
- sub1
- sub2
- sub3
- dummy
- dummy
etc..

We eventually used NorTree's "function BeforeStart(){}" to simply change the value of the number of sub-menu items so that the dummy sections were ignored:

function BeforeStart(){Menu1_1[3] = 2;Menu1_2[3] = 3;return;}

Not exactly elegant but it works for us.

Cheers

IMIS

[garyhay]

Question for Norman

Norman

Does a method exist to start nortree/cascade from a specific section.

We have two main sections that will use nortree and really need these to be independant of each other.

e.g.

Products-
This prod
This prod

(1 instance)

Others-
This prod
This prod

(another instance)


Also can we place the code in a table cell?

Thanks in Advance

[NormanRouxel]

Re:- starting from a different section.

That sounds like you want two menus. One fed from one part of the section tree and the other from another. While this could be done (by breaking the section structures up via a lot of JavaScript) it's probably a big tricky job and not one I want to do.

However it is possible to have more than one menu - you'd have to look in the TwinHelix info for this - it's nothing to do with me.

It's also possible to have some non-section items in the menu. See www.drillpine.biz/forums/ for info on doing this in Norcascade.

Re:- Also can we place the code in a table cell?

The DHTML is floating above your page. It's not really "in" it. However there is a technique for locating it relative to an anchor tag (which can be in a table cell). Again see TwinHelix for info.

Norman

[garyhay]

Norman

from Twinhelix I get the following help

Position the menu relative to an anchor <a id="home" name="home"> in the page, positioned 20px below it. There are two steps to doing this. First, move the POP_EVENTS.JS script tag immediately before the closing </BODY> tag of your documents, after your document content. Then, use this as your menu position:

startMenu('root', false, 'window.page.elmPos("home").x', 'window.page.elmPos("home").y + 20', 17, hBar);

I cant see a POP_EVENTS.JS tag in the version we are using and I assume you have renamed a lot of bits and pieces to suit our needs?

Any help appreciated

[NormanRouxel]

It's in the norcascade-integration.txt readme (line 78ish).

Also the NorCascade setup GUI deals with the Target for you. Just enter it in Target.

Norman

[garyhay]

Thanks Norman

Will have a look at it in the office tommorow

[swee]

Hi all.
Sorry everyone for the being rude to Cut in suddenly but i have question regarding the "nortree" application. does anyone knows how to lengthen vertically the menu bar? because i have added an extra word. U can View it at http://www.hst.com.sg/acatalog/shop.html --> then Rollover to the "shirting fabrics". You will see "Gianfranco.." been hidden. Thank you for ur attention. Thanks and sorry again.

[cdicken]

In the main Nortree Interface, about a third of the way down, you will see a label that says 'Sub Level Menus' with two fields labelled 'Height' and 'Width'.

You need to edit the values in here to change the size of your sub-level boxes in Nortree.