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What are Big Happy Menus?
They are Happy Menus which can handle BIG menu content. More specifically, these are the extra features:
- Maximum size of menu content which can be read is 1000 items (raised from 50 items).
- The pop-out and drop-down menus have 7 extra submenu levels (raised from 2 to 9).
- Because big menus can involve a lot of data transfer from server to client, there
is an option to handle zip-compressed menu content (typically accelerates menu reading
by about 10 times).
- You can specify your own names for the menu files. One of the great side effects
of this is that you can tell the menu to read its content from PHP, ASP, JSP or other
dynamic scripts on the server. This lets you do dynamic menus (which can also be
zip-compressed with some scripting languages).
- Menu content can optionally be read from parameters (instead of the usual external
file).
- Non-Roman character sets can be specified (e.g. Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic,
Hebrew, Greek).
- Otherwise everything is the same as Happy Menus - themes, menu types, usage, etc.
Can I really have 1000 menu items?
For really big menus, use a drop-down or pop-out menu, and make sure you
arrange the menu items in a user-friendly hierarchical fashion (not just
a big flat list!). Then you really can have 1000 menu items. Add zip-compressed
loading, and they will also all load in seconds.
With sliding menus, the design of the interface makes it impractical
to go beyond a few hundred items. With buttons and tickers, it is unlikely
you would want to have such big menus - big menus need submenus to display
well.
How can I do dynamic menus?
Read the articles on dynamic menus
at imint.com. Dynamic menus aren't something you can master in 5 minutes, but they are
extremely powerful. If you like server-side scripting, spend time reading the knowledge
base articles at imint.com - it'll be well worth it.
The following shows some typical indexsource parameters loading the menu content from dynamic server scripts. Note how query strings can be included.
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE=menu.php?user=bob>
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE=menu.jsp?session=123>
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE=menu.pl>
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE=menu.asp>
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE=menu.cfml>
Can I try Big Happy Menus before I buy them?
No, because we have to limit our site administration. However if you wish
to check that we are really capable of offering what is described here, then
try out Alien Menus Professional (another
of our products) which has exactly the same large scale menu handling abilities.
The "big menu" modules in Big Happy Menus and Alien Menus Professional are
exactly the same.
How do I do static zip compression?
It very easy to do this.
If you are using static files, then your menu file is probably something
like menu.txt. Zip it up into menu.zip. Then add this to the HTML in the applet
page:
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE="menu.zip,1">
The "1" signifies the format and tells the menu to expect zip format, not
uncompressed.
How do I do zip compression with dynamic menus?
This depends on the server-side language you are using. You have to know
how to get your server-side language to create a binary stream emulating
a zip file with a single text file inside it. An MSc in Computer Sciences
may be a good start. It's certainly possible with PHP and java-based
server languages. We're not sure whether .NET languages have this ability.
We can help with PHP (for an appropriate hourly fee).
On the client side, everything is easy. You just add something like this
to the HTML:
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE="menu.php,1">
The "1" signifies the format and tells the menu to expect zip format, not
uncompressed. If it was a "0", or if there was no number, it would expect
an uncompressed plain text ascii format.
How do I do parameter indices?
Read this
to find out how to write the menu parameters. It is also crucial to write
the following to set the index source:
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE="-,4">
Which are better - parameter indices or external files?
There are advantages and disadvantages both ways. Which is better for
you may depend on the nature of your project. Given a free choice,
most people choose external files for easier maintenance. But there
are good reasons to choose parameters as well. Read this for more
information.
How do I implement Chinese (or some other character set)?
<PARAM NAME=indexsource VALUE="menu.txt,2,GB2312">
The string following the second comma (which is optional) can be
one of the standard international codes for character sets. The
codes are generally the same as those which you would write into
the meta tags of an HTML page header to force the browser to
switch to a specific character set - they are widely listed around
the web. Note that the display of non-Roman character sets is
variably supported on older operating systems - this is a very
complex area. All we can do is offer the best non-Roman character
set support that we can.
How can I buy "Big Happy Menus"?
Click on the buying options
and you should see two licence types available. Note that you can only buy
Big Happy Menus as a complete package.
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