July 28, 2000

11:53 AM

These sliding menusmay not be anything much to you design mavens out there, but to a simple engineer/management consultant like myself, they are addictively neat. Whenever I check out the site, I find myself pulling them out and playing with them while deciding where to go in the site. How'd they do that?
posted by fpatrick (9 comments total)

It's this thing called Flash. Gotta admit, those menus are fun to play with though. Put your mouse over a certain part and watch 'em go back and forth...
posted by deckard at 12:14 PM on July 28, 2000

...and back and forth and back and forth and the only way to stop them is to mouse out and try again. You have to hit a link when the window opens, or else the window flaps open and shut spastically.

Poor programming, IMO.
posted by wiremommy at 12:23 PM on July 28, 2000

They really aren't well designed - something a little goofy with the action script, or the hit area on the buttons.

I must admit, however, that fpatrick brings up a great point. When I first saw Flash content, I was absolutely awestruck - I had no idea what it was!

The pullout menus at SciFi (though a bit buggy) are great uses of Flash; really impressive and functional at the same time. All too often, designers attempt to harness as much 'jaw dropping' content as possible. It ends up backfiring. At least that's my take on it.
posted by aladfar at 12:37 PM on July 28, 2000

You could do this with DTHML surely? It can't be much more complicated than a couple of layers and a bit of motion scripting... Not that I could do it without a week or so to research all the stuff I'd need to know about...
posted by barbelith at 4:47 PM on July 28, 2000

Right now, Flash is probably the only way to implement it without running into horrific cross-platform compatibility problems.

(To be honest, I was surprised it worked under Netscape/Linux -- my browser of necessity -- until I realised it was Flash at work.)
posted by holgate at 5:07 PM on July 28, 2000

A little deeper into the site, they've another well designed Flash component: check out the menu along the top of this page. There's movement to draw the eye and some (relatively) subtle aural feedback. Sure, you probably could do this with DHTML - but why bother when you can get it done in a tenth the time?
posted by m.polo at 6:28 AM on July 29, 2000

"How'd they do that?"

Incorrectly. If you drag the mouse *down* (as opposed to left or up) the menu stays out. Oops.

It *is* spiffy, though, and a good example, IMAO, of *useful* flash.

posted by baylink at 12:16 PM on July 29, 2000

I'm just happy they didn't crash Netscape. That's how I could tell they weren't DHTML.
posted by smackfu at 9:00 PM on July 29, 2000

It is in fact possible and cross-browserable with DHTML. With the help of one of the best DHTML tutorials I've come accross in a long time, I was able to create a pretty decent looking slide effect, almost identical to the one of scifi.com (except mine works when a link is clicked) on a site I did a while back.
posted by tomorama at 5:36 PM on July 30, 2000