Optional Navigation Bar minimize / maximize

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The Monkey
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Posts: 168
Joined: Tue Mar 09, 2004 9:05 am
Location: Arkansas, USA

Optional Navigation Bar minimize / maximize

Post by The Monkey »

Hello there,

I am currently programming my personal website, and I've decided to go with the following format: http://yogle.net/test.html

The above page is a work in progress. I think it has display problems in Interet Explorer 6, which I have since fixed but have yet to upload. Anyway, you will get the idea of what I want to accomplish.

I greatly prefer the centered "column" style of my design over one that requires the browser maximized with favorites turned off to view correctly... way too many of my friends (who are also my frequent visitors) prefer to leave their browsers' taking up half the screen or some such thing.

Now, while the left bar is useful, as it contains the sub-categories as well as profiling information, if you were to read a long forum thread, or rant by me, or anything similar to that, you may want to temporarily minimize it so as to maximize reading space. I've seen this done on both Evolt.org & SitePoint, the former using a cookies/php method, and the latter using a javascript method.

In my opinion, they both have benefits and downsides. The PHP/cookie method is, obviously, more likely to work for more users, but it has the downside of requiring more complicated templating, a cookie in the users browser to determine which way to display the method, and obviously requires a page-refresh if the user decides to maximize the navbar.

The JS method has the upside of being instantaneous, allowing the user to switch back and forth between minimized and maximized without having to reload the page. The JS could be cached, too, via a <link> tag in the header. Downside is getting it to work with multiple browsers, and accessability for people with older browsers or JS disabled.

Actually, I am not too concerned about browsers with JS disabled: The only downside is they cannot minimize the navbar. It really has no accessability issues, per say...

Any thoughts?
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feyd
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Post by feyd »

could probably do both, without much strain. The minimize link would "normally" run a JS function which would hide the navbar and set whatever you needed setting. If you place this JS code to run through the onclick event, you can easily avoid hitting the actual href used there. Those users with JS disabled, or whatever will simply fall-through this event trap and proceed to the link doing the php method.
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