Neither of the above work-arounds are substitutes for (at least) proper drop-down menus
What the Popup Navigation Box document gives you is something that is very close to “mega menus” as they appear on Apple’s website. It’s not the same as Freeway-style submenus, but it provides much greater flexibility in adding content and styles.
If you’d like navigation popups to appear automatically, then I think you’d have to add some JavaScript to do that. I hope to look into that in future, but I don’t have time to look at it now.
It’s worth noting that Apple’s “mega menus” require JavaScript to function. They don’t work if you turn JavaScript off (in the Security pane of Safari’s Settings window), but Apple’s website is still navigable because it also uses alternative navigation systems: the main menu and secondary (scrolling) navigation bar don’t require JavaScript. Most people have JavaScript turned on, but it’s good practice to have a navigation system that works if JavaScript is disabled (e.g. for security reasons). Xway’s navigation menus don’t require JavaScript to function (although they use it for non-essential purposes).
You’ve come to Xway from Freeway, so you’re used to Freeway-style submenus - but they’re not really an “essential navigation tool”. They’re not used on Apple’s website, or on (many) other large websites.
Hi Jeremy. I much appreciate the work you put in here. I’ve incorporated the fade effect as a secondary menu successfully, changing font, size, color etc but I can’t get it to change color rather than underscore on “hover”. Can you help/ Thanks, David
Is this in a document that is based on the Popup Navigation document? What is the link element that you are trying to style? Is this text in the popup box?
Yes. I’ve dropped it into a website based on the assistant template. You can see it here under services: tarris.co.uk
The links work fine but I’d like to colour the hover rather than underline.
So I think you’re talking about the submenu (Construction, Electrical, etc.)
It looks as if you’ve applied styling to the individual links, via the Link Inspector, and this is overriding the default link styles. What I think you want to do is to remove this, and then change the default link styles that are set on the “submenu” box.
To remove the individual link styling: put the text insertion point in each link (“Construction” etc.) and select the Inherit Style checkbox in the Text section of the Link Inspector. When you’ve done this, the links should be using default link styles.
To change the default link styles on the “submenu” box: select this box and go to the Default Styles section of the Box Inspector, and set the styles that you want to be used for Link, Visited Link, and Hover Link, after choosing Link (etc.) from the Element popup at the top of this section. I normally set the same styles on Link and Visited Link. To get a different hover colour, and turn off underlining, choose Hover Link from the Element popup, choose a colour from the Text Color popup, and turn off underlining in the Text Decoration control (if it’s turned on).
For more information on link styles, see the Styling Links section in the Links chapter of the Xway User Guide (which you can view by choosing Xway User Guide from Xway’s Help menu).
Many thanks Jeremy. I’m having go now. Having this option makes Xway very much more commercially usable. It is a good work aroundintead of more complex menus.