Posted 1 year ago #
so I did it,
I took toolbox 1.1, which is really great, and I started building my own MU theme.
I figured superfish is way to go. Then I spent next three day-nights figuring why that script just would NOT work. Searching our forum, I found hundreds 1post unsolved topics querying 'superfish'.
It is really great concept, and it should really work just perfectly with your theme, but I wanted to see what is your general opinion about superfish menu?
Hi,
Whatever anybody has told you, there's no way that something as complicated as Superfish will work with every theme. No way.
It's JQuery, which is definitely very cool. But WordPress lives and dies by Javascript, so there are zillions of possible Javascript conflicts, and they can clash with JQuery, or with any Javascript-related app. Especially if you have lots of plugins. Unless you're an excellent JQuery programmer AND CSS expert, you'll have no luck fixing it, either. It is possible that if you turn off all other plugins, your menu might suddenly start to work.
Dropdown menus and apps like Superfish are complex. So for the newbie, chances are if you don't get it working pretty fast, you might as well uninstall it.
You can make it easy on yourself. Many themes have their own nice dropdown code, so no need for Superfish or its relatives. This would be the easiest way to go for dropdowns.
Sorry, I probably ruined your day.
Posted 1 year ago #
Flamenco you made my day ... :)
I wanted to make sure I was not going insane, since I figured something is super fishy with superfish. But really kinda cool idea though.
As you say, there is drop down code, and I will look for it.
I wanted to have my own control of what is going on with each of wordpress function results. As for example wanted to have control over this call:
<nav id="cat-menu" role="navigation">
<?php wp_nav_menu( array(
'theme_location' => 'primary-navigation',
'container' => false,
'menu_class' => 'sf-menu' ) ); ?>
</nav><!-- # cat-menu -->
resulting:
<nav id="cat-menu" role="navigation">
<ul id="menu-cat-menu" class="sf-menu"><li id="menu-item-89" class="menu-item menu-item-type-taxonomy menu-item-object-category menu-item-89">link name
<li id="menu-item-90" class="menu-item menu-item-type-taxonomy menu-item-object-category menu-item-90">link name
</nav><!-- # cat-menu -->
and just to wrap it with superfish object. According to documentation, and proper linking to its js / css we should have decent menu in our theme. Like you said, wp lives and dies by Javascript.
I'm glad you took my somewhat grim comments with good humor.
Interesting... you got quite far into it. I like to make my own themes, but when I do grab a free theme from here, I usually stick to stuff that's reasonably popular and highly-rated. Many of these do have dropdown menu CSS as standard equipment, I've found, so no plugin needed. I have been using Constructor a lot recently, and like it a lot.
I'm intending to weed out things that you find in many outlier free themes, like ones clearly only tested in one browser, don't validate, and have silly things like hard-coded menus.
For themes that have no dropdown capability, there are loads of dropdown plugins, as a quick search on "dropdowns" reveals. So it's possible you could find one that will work with your plugins. It would be quite easy to do a quick test of several of those, and just trash them if they don't work.
Posted 1 year ago #
I read through your post carefully.
Installed Constructor, and yes, it looks nice, but as far as I see it, you could use its css concepts. I did really like how theme is made, some solid pattern, specially liked get_constructor_layout call. Still, I would not use it. It seems to me like there is too many divs included, I just recently read about good term, divits, it was probably around for a while...still, I really kinda excepted it.
It is great thing you told me about dropdown plugins, since I started doing everything from the code, which really is kinda weird thing to do with all that triping that you are actually talking to wordpress. But, honestly, I do kinda feel that way.
I will go through all of those plugins, thank you for your thought.
Since you're really interested in examining themes carefully, you may find theme frameworks to be useful. The idea is to have a fairly "empty" theme to start with, but with many nice widget areas for your use. Then you use child themes so that you can incorporate your own CSS and other changes. This works best if you're quite fluent in CSS, and have a good sense of design.
I have used Thematic for this, and it's really great.
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/thematic
The beauty of a child theme is that you can keep your changes separate, so that the "parent" theme can be updated without losing them. In fact, you can also make a child theme for pretty much any theme.
Here's info about child themes:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes
Posted 1 year ago #
You know what made me laugh...
so I went and check out Thematic, I was searching for frameworks and your advice came in great moment, but the funny part is that framework is using superfish. ( it was pleasant not mean laugh :) )
Framework looks great and I will probably be using it in a while. I did also leave superfish to work with my own theme. I used google loader to get jquery to it and that showed good results. It also loads incredibly fast like 40-80 ms ( depending on proxy and cache but still quite fast regardless) below 100ms
The idea of child themes is great. I really really like it, but to be honest with you I still never tried it. I sow it in action, but I never really made one myself. I am still trying to find perfect parent, which buy the way sounds kinda freaky...
your advices were helping me with my work. Thank you
Good point! You know, I've used Thematic for so long, and it just works so reliably for me, so I didn't even think of Superfish for that! That is funny!
I actually work with people who are on a campaign to never use dropdowns. And generally, I support that idea. Dropdowns are frequently an unnecessary complication, hard to support across browsers, and often tricky for usability. I will admit, though, that making extremely varied menus is harder in WP than in MODx, my other system, where you can get absolutely insanely complex with menus if you want to. You can get "menu ridiculous" in WP, too, but it takes more work. :-)
I was previously on the same quest as you, and good luck on that! I also use Atahualpa, but it's full of tables. I just put Suffusion on my blog, and I'm extremely impressed with that. Lightword is also very nice.
Posted 1 year ago #
Thank you Flamenco,
I was checking out themes you suggested. Most likely I will be using Thematic framework along with some toolbox ideas. I love when projects have svn, also nice clean logic and almost no CSS.
I would like to achieve something between image-centric and business oriented balance. So I do kinda also accept no dropdowns idea, but that also means that many problems ought to be solved...which off course means raising another and another problems all over again.
It is pain in the ass, simply put. Luckily for us, wordpress rules :)
A,
You've got some fascinating ideas! I don't speak SVN, but am very fluent in CSS, so I often go to that for solutions instead of code. If you put our two brains together, wow, we'd kick some ass! :-)
I don't mean to oversell it, but I'm thinking you might enjoy having a look at MODx sometime. It's a pretty good framework, and is extremely easy to template, easier than WP. Then again, if you enjoy the bits of distributed code all over that WP likes to do, you're probably all set.
Ciao,
Dave
Posted 1 year ago #
Dave,
I apologize I did not answer to you for a while.
I did, though, look through all frameworks you mentioned. True, they are great and powerful.
Also I figured we are getting off topic here so we could create some other thread or we could keep talking in private if you wish. I just finished (which is why I was not logging here) my MU theme.
I will be happy to keep exchanging thoughts with you.
take care,
Aleksandar
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