Frequently Asked Questions

I receive a fair amount of email regarding the tree menu, and some of the questions occur more than once. Therefore I have put together this little FAQ where you might find the answer to your inquiry. Please do read it before you go off emailing me.

FAQ #1: Can I use the tree menu without frames?

Unfortunately, you cannot. The tree menu uses one hidden frame for the code, and one for output. The output frame, often named "menu" gets its contents rewritten every time the user interacts with the menu. Therefore, one would have to do some severe modification to get the tree menu to work without frames.

The code for 2.3.1 changed the way the menu does output for browsers capable of adding content dynamically (Internet Explorer & Mozilla/Netscape 6), which was the first step towards a frameless menu. In other words, work is being done on this issue but no set release date for a frameless menu can be set at this time.

FAQ #2: Can I use the tree menu on my commercial site?

Yes, you can. The tree menu is released under the BSD License, found in the file "COPYING" in the downloadable files. This enables you to freely use the code and modify it, provided you stick to the few guidelines found in the license. I've also uploaded the license text to the web in case you wonder what it says.

FAQ #3: Does the tree menu work with Netscape Navigator 6?

Yes!

FAQ #4: Can I Use ASP/JSP/CGI to create the menu?

Yes, you can. Examples using PHP, ASP & Perl have been uploaded to the contributions section of the site. Apart from that I have no examples to give you since I haven't done this myself. I suggest joining the mailing list and asking politely if anyone there can help you out, and remember to mention what programming language you'll use to it'll be easier to help you.

FAQ #5: Why won't my submenu open?

This is most commonly related to submenus that also point to a document. If the document is a local document you will have to make sure it has the tracking code present or the menu won't be refreshed and the submenu shown open. There are three exceptions to this general rule though, where the menu itself will force a refresh. These were introduced in version 2.3.1:

1. The target of the document is "_blank" (meaning it'll open in a new window)
2. The document isn't local. A local document is defined as one which doesn't start with a protocol ("scheme" in the HTTP RFC) of: http, https, file, javascript, mailto, ftp, telnet, news, nntp or gopher.
3. The target of the document isn't found inside the same frameset as the menu itself

These rules are listed in their order of priority, so if you have a remote document with target set to "_blank", rule #1 will apply and the others will be ignored.

FAQ #6: How can I achieve the highlighting used on this site?

To get the exact same appearance as I've got it requires two steps:

1. Add the following line to code.html:
   MTMExtraCSS.addRule('a.tracked','color:#000000;background-color:#e0e0e0;');
   You can of course change the foreground and background colour settings to the right ones for you.
2. I use a patched mtmcode.js which adds a   behind the text of all items. To get a copy of that version save this file and replace your copy of mtmcode.js with it. It's version 2.3.2-macfriendly with only that one change made.

That's all!