Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

I am LOVING xMenus!!

We took our new template live yesterday (built on xTreme + xMenus) - and we are most satisfied -- but there is one very annoying problem that I am not able to workaround on my own and I'd appreciate any solutions from the community or TXS:

My test suite consists of:

Mac - safari, firefox, chrome (all latest versions)
WindowsXP - IE8, chrome, firefox (all latest versions)

unfortunately, I do not have a Win7 or Win8 computer here to test with. I should just buy a Win8 upgrade.

With that said, I have been testing my new template w xMenus - and it looks very consistent on all browsers/all platforms EXCEPT WinXP Chrome

The css that we edited above to tighten up the spacing of the top menu:

.xm-menu.xm-horizontal.xm-vertical-blinds li.xm-top > a {
height: 31px;
line-height: 31px;
padding: 0 19px;
/* padding WAS 23px but needs to be 19px for WinXP Chrome */
}

I had it set to padding: 0 23px; -- and this looked PERFECT in all browsers EXCEPT for Chrome in WinXP SP3. In WInXP Chrome, if set to 23px, the last menu item wrapped around to the next line and placed the last menu item all by itself in line 2. This is not desired!

If set to 23px, all items appear very well spaced on all other browsers (but broken in WinXP Chrome). If set to 19px, WinXP Chrome is now fixed, but the spacing between top menu items is tighter than I want to be on all other browsers/OS

Any ideas why this is?

I also tested on a WinXP partition that is on my macbook pro -- identical results. (saying that I tested on a generic Dell PC about 4 years old, then tested on a VirtualBox partition). Identical results. WinXP Chrome simply renders different for this css class??? Yikes???

I have noticed other slight differences in other spacing across browsers -- and I know it can never be perfect, but this is a major one since it busts the entire page.

1. Has anyone else seen this?
2. What's the workaround?

Thanks,
J

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

Ok -- nobody found a solution for me for the WinXP Chrome padding issue yet... here's another one...

xMenus with xMobile -- now we're cooking with gas...
BUT -- there are some oddities, and there are some user experience issues and questions...

1. if you click on a horizontal menu title and the menu drops down, on the desktop, you can hover away to make the pulldown disappear. On xmobile, there is no such hover possible. IF the menu title does not have a link associated with it, how should we have the customer close the pulldown if they are browsing?

2. Should I be using xMenus in the xMobile template at all in the first place? Now we're crossing threads and going slightly off-topic for xmenus -- but since we're all friends here... my goal for xMenus is to make a more sophisticated and easy access to my static pages. I have many pages of help files and videos -- xmenus would be an obvious solution. BUT -- can I make a menu of static pages, using the same menu format as browse all cats or featured products? maybe that's the better way? How? I'm evaluating xMobile and it looks like it could be done, so it may just be a <ul><li> with appropriate classes assigned.
Unfortunately, I can't work on this right now... I will try tomorrow night.

3. If I elect to go with xmenus -- what have you guys done to change menu width if orientation changes from portrait to landscape? People DO this on their phones constantly. But if i have a menu width fixed at 320px, it looks like ka if phone goes on its side. What's the wise-man solution for this?

4. WHO is using xMenus with xMobile or another mobile template? Can I see your design?

Thanks,

J

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

It only took a few minutes...

http://forum.x-cart.com/showthread.php?p=361647#post361647

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

You can have a look here, just found some other issue on Delivery charges link

Kev

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

Hi Kev,

I'm accessing from iPhone5
I don't see the xMenus?
I see them on the desktop template - but not mobile?

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

Hey I'm sorry. I must have been with the fairies last night, what I could do was bring xMenus up via the full site link - not v good for phones but adequate for tablets.

Most sites that have a mobile friendly site either direct you there immediately or stick you on a landing page and ask you. I think this xMobile works better

If you look at the purchase options xMenus isn't available as an option just xBanners & Predictive search. Tbh I don't think I would want xMenus on a phone.

I nearly didn't get xMobile because BusyKitchen seemed to work so well with iphone (4s + sony erricson)

Kev

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

2 tips to improve your xMenus performance:

note: THIS IS ONLY FOR SITES that are stable and not developing new menus.


#1 - combine xm_extra_style.css into cached css (remove individual css file load)

1. Bust out the css file,
xm_extra_style.css

This file is auto-generated by xMenus - essentially 3 css classes for each menu position.
It is an additional css file that is not integrated into css speed-up tool -- so if you are optimizing your site for performance, less individual css files are better than more. But css speedup tool solves that -- BUT because of how xMenus is designed, it does not send the small css to the speed-up tool (using load_defer)

1. Go to your page source for your home page (or wherever your xMenus load)
2. Find: "xm_extra_style.css"
3. Click on the link, that is probably something like:
http://www.domain.com/var/cache/xm_extra_style.css
4. COPY the contents of this file into a NEW file...
/skin/common_files/modules/TXS_XMenus/custom_css/xm_extra_style.css

set permissions as needed.

5. in file:
/skin/common_files/modules/TXS_XMenus/include_css.tpl

FIND

comment it out.

Immediately below, insert:


Now, xm_extra_style.css will load (cached) with all the other css.
IF YOU MAKE ANY CHANGES to your menu, you will need to disable this, grab the edited css, etc...
THIS IS ONLY FOR SITES that are stable and not developing new menus.

#2 - EMBEDDED IMAGES in menu "Offer Text"

This is a brilliant feature in xMenus -- BUT -- the images need to get sent to the CDN. I don't know if this is the BEST way, but it works.

IF you are embedding an image into the "offer text" -- instead of using an absolute path to the image (in the xMenus demo, they put the images in /images/XM/ -- and that's the problem -- this will not serve the images from your cdn)

INSTEAD -- make the path to your images a full path,
<img src="http://www.domain.com/images/XM/free_shipping_187x107.jpg" width="187" height="107" />

THEN - in file,
/skin/common_files/modules/TXS_XMenus/display_menu/menu.H.tpl

FIND:
REPLACE WITH:
Bingo. Special offer images in the menus are now served from your CDN.

IF THERE IS A BETTER WAY TO DO THIS, please share!!!!

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

We have confirmed this issue exists in Chrome in WIn7 as well as Chrome in WInXP

Check this out:

http://www.carpeperdiem.us/xcartforum/padding_winxp-chrome_issue_900px.png

Anyone experience this?
IS THERE a workaround???

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

Just looking at the images, it looks like floats are being used. Floats are evil and should only be used when absolutely necessary. I would use a css table which will keep everything in the row and appear more consistently.

Re: NEW xMenus - The Ultimate Menu Manager for X-Cart
 

No floats.
It's all css.
<ul><li>
padding
etc...

THE ISSUE is that in Chrome in Windows (XP, 7, haven't tested WIn8 yet) the padding renders wider than every other browser, including chrome/mac, IE, FF (win or mac).

I tried to find a solution, but my eyes popped out.

I can live with this for about 2 more weeks, but then I need the menu real estate for a new top menu item (4 letter word) that I am launching... and this will be a mess... thanks for your inoput - if you want to see the page source I can send you the URL? It's pretty frustrating to see the exact same source on Windows Chrome render differently than all the others!!