Hello. I somehow got roped into created a site for someone with a restaurant (despite neither being paid for it nor having any particular web design expertise).
The restaurant menu will be on one page of the site. I figured on subdividing it into sections (soups, entrees, etc.).
Should I go with frames, with the categories at left, a link for each category triggering that particular series of menu items on the right, or something else?
As best I know, I ought to avoid frames if I can, but I’m not sure how else to approach this (and learning how to create frames would be a whole 'nother thing).
I wouldn’t do that if you expect anyone to ever want to print this out. Could you simply put everything out in the open on the page, and then use anchors to navigate within the page?
Chuckamuck,
not sure what you mean. The pdf for download would be separate from the online menus–just for people to download and/or print. I still want the full menu online, browsable by sections. I definitely don’t want a pdf as the only option–I personally can’t stand when sites use PDFs for online content.
Why not use the accordion effect with Soups, Entrees, Mains in the headers with the different dishes in the accordion. This would keep the page height relatively small until the accordion is instigated.
I looked at that, but there’s too much content to use the Accordion effect; the result wouldn’t be too much different than putting it all on one page and using anchors (I don’t know that most people know- or think to close one section before opening another). I think the Accordion effect is good when you have relatively small amounts of text to reveal (as in the examples you linked to), but when each section is a decent percentage of a page, it gets unwieldy.
Then I think your answer would be to spread the menu over several pages - there is of course an optimum amount of information that should go on each page and it sounds like the menu in question is too extensive for one page.
I know what Gordon Ramsey would say “Too much f***ing choice!!!”
That was my idea with the frames, where each category selection in a left-frame would trigger a new frame (basically equivalent to a page) in the right (main) frame.
I’m still investigating how to do this with layers.
Well, I went with layers, and have begun the process of putting it together.
One strange burp: I’m formatting by creating HTML items which have the show/hide layer action attached. Inside each HTML item, I’ve placed 2-3 of tables for formatting the list.
On one particular HTML item/layer, everything looks fine in layout, but in the Preview pane or browser preview, the tables are screwed up. The HTML item contains three elements: two tables and another HTML item (for content that doesn’t need table format). Even though everything looks fine in layout, when I preview (pane or browser) the two tables get squashed together–the top few cells of the bottom one overlaps the lower cells of the top table.
The overlapping tables do NOT abut in layout–they are the equivalent of 2-3 rows apart.
In addition, even though table/cell width measurements are identical between the two tables, the lower table is displayed as being narrower than the top one.
Here’s the clinker: the formatting problems occur in the Preview pane and in Safari, but not in FireFox. I suppose Freeway uses the Safari rendering engine for the preview pane?
Is there a trick to make sure that the page renders in both browsers how it appears in layout?