JazzMenu

 Documentation

Configuration of JazzMenu is done using parameters - specified in the <APPLET> tag in your HTML file. This is the standard way of configuring Java applets. Here is an example of one such config file, with comments about each 'tag' in brackets.

Firstly, lets run through all of the parameters available, and what they do.

Parameter Example Purpose
menu_colour FFFFFF (white) Sets the colour of the menu when the mouse is NOT over it
highlight_colour FF0000 (red) Sets the colour of the menu item when the mouse passes over it
clicked_colour 00FF00 (green) This is the colour the menu item turns when it is clicked on
text_colour 0000FF (blue) Sets the colour of the menu text
outline_colour FF00FF (purple) Sets the colour of the menu outline
fontname Courier The font used for the menu text
fontsize 12 The size of the font
fontstyle 0 The style of the font
menumode vertical Which direction the menu goes in
menutitle1 A Menu Item The text displayed on the menu item
menulink1 index.html The URL to jump to once clicked on
menuframe1 _top The target frame for the new URL

The first 5 parameters alter the colour of the menu display. The format for them is a standard hex format. There are 6 characters. The first 2 represent the red component of the colour, the next 2 are for green, and the final 2 are for the blue. They range between 0 and FF (or 255 in decimal).

Valid values for the fontname parameter are: Helvetica, TimesRoman and Courier. The fontsize can be any number you want! JazzMenu doesn't mind - as long as it fits in the menu item itself, it will look fine. And the fontstyle has 4 possible values: 0, 1, 2 and 3! Basically, 0 represents 'normal'. 1 is for bold text. 2 is for italic text. And 3 is for bold and italic menu text. The default font is Helvetica, size 12, normal.

The menumode parameter should be either 'vertical' or 'horizontal'. JazzMenu defaults to a vertical display.

Finally, there are the 3 parameters you need to actually specify the menu items. These are menutitle - the text displayed on the menu, menulink - the URL to display once clicked on, and menuframe - any valid frame to display the new URL in. As you can see from the table above, these parameters have the number 1 after them. That's how you specify the first menu item. For menu item 2, use menulink2, menutitle2 and menuframe2. And so on, up to 20 menu items. If you forget to put one of these 3, JazzMenu will just stop looking for more menu items and display what it has successfully found.

And here is an example of all of these parameters in the actual HTML of a page.

<applet code="jazzmenu.class" width="556" height="36">
    <param name="fontname" value="Helvetica">
    <param name="fontsize" value="15">
    <param name="fontstyle" value="3">
    <param name="menu_colour" value="5EE2FA">
    <param name="highlight_colour" value="B7F4F5">
    <param name="clicked_colour" value="FFFFFF">
    <param name="outline_colour" value="0000FF">
    <param name="text_colour" value="FF2222">
    <param name="menumode" value="horizontal">
    <param name="menulink1" value="item1.htm">
    <param name="menuframe1" value="_top">
    <param name="menutitle1" value="Item 1">
    <param name="menulink2" value="item2.htm">
    <param name="menuframe2" value="_top">
    <param name="menutitle2" value="Item 2">
    <param name="menulink3" value="item3.htm">
    <param name="menuframe3" value="_top">
    <param name="menutitle3" value="Item 3">
    <param name="menulink4" value="item4.htm">
    <param name="menuframe4" value="_top">
    <param name="menutitle4" value="Item 4">
  </applet>

And that's about it! Take a look at the examples, play around with them yourself, and enjoy JazzMenu.

 

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