Safe Speed Forums

I've been revisiting the difficult subject of Safe Speed website navigation. One problem that I've always had with navigation systems is integration with existing content. I've wished to avoid susbtantial revisions to over 300 pages of content.

But I think I've found a solution - javascript drop down menus added to every page with a simple php include statement. The 'breakthrough' was the discovery that I could force the servers to parse .html pages as php with a .htaccess command.

Manual updating of the javascript is too much for me, but I found this programme: http://www.xtreeme.com/dhtml downloaded the demo and it worked first time. See this test: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/home1.html

I have questions...

Would anyone recommend a different menu generator / manager programme?

If I go down this route, will the search engine bots follow the links? I'm guessing not, so there will have to be a complete navigation system for the bots...

Can I get better backwards compatability with earlier browsers? This programme doesn't work with Netscape 4.79 for example.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Well, your demo page doesn't work in Firefox for a start (menu appears, but no drop downs), so I'd strike that one from your list straight away.

Whenever I've recommended a menu in the past, I've always recommended this place:

http://dhtml-menu.com/

...which has very good cross-platform support, and is highly customisable.

I'll be honest though, chucking a menu on the current design is more of a bodge-fix than a sensible way forward - you need to get your site into a CMS of some description, and soon, because it's only going to become even more insanely difficult to organise as time goes by.

Oh, and whilst you're at it I'd recommend switching to a CSS-based design - that way, you can change a couple of lines of code to reorganise/reformat your entire site. I can't even begin to comprehend how you cope with the site as it is; it goes against virtually every principle of accessible web-design!

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Carl Prescott

Hi Carl,

Thanks for the compatability tip - I'm looking into it. The software claims to be compatable with a wide range of browsers (including Netscape 4.x).

The menu you recommended is too slow and complex to edit and adjust. I have to find a menu generator that works.

Going CMS would break thousands of links into Safe Speed content and is completely out of the question, not to mention the development time.

The only real problem with the site at present is navigation. It looks like I can fix that well with drop down menus. Of course, if I'd known what it was going to become I would have started out very differently. But it is what it is and I don't have the time (or the alternative: money) to make wholesale changes - and I'm sure as hell not going to be breaking those links...

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

It would be only a couple of hours work to write a script to parse all URLs on served pages and correct them to the CMS system ones; so long as you planned a sensible migration that gave pages names based on current links. Failing that, a simple regex search and replace could probably do it for you.

Development time I don't think would be hugely significant either. If you have any spare space on a box somewhere that I could get access to, I'd be willing to try and do at least a proof-of-concept version of SS in my spare time? Can't promise progress will be super-swift as it'll depend on me having time available, but I'm happy to give you that much...

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Carl Prescott

That's very generous and helpful of you Carl. Thanks. I'm nervous of making some very important things worse by going down that route, but I am open to persuasion.

If you're comfortable going down the 'proof of concept' route, I've love to see what you can do.

But I'm determined to try and preserve all those links into Safe Speed content - hell they are even printed in books and magazines - let alone within the site links.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

There's a somewhat crude and untidy but functional navigation menu on the following test page:

http://www.safespeed.org.uk/home1.html

I'm still working on classification, colours and layout. But I can quickly add a menu such as this one to every safe speed page (including the forums).

Comments welcome.

Does anyone want to highlight any classification issues? (bearing in mind I'm still working on it).

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Like the menus. Couple of typos which I'm sure you'll spot before going live (Grap instead of graph, forgot the other one).

I am broadband now. How big is it, and will it be an issue for dial-uppers?

Hiya, yep, I'm aware of the typos, thanks.

Current total effective size is about 40KB. On a bad dial up connection at 3K bytes / second the load time is going to be about 13 seconds.

It'll cache locally so the delay shouldn't be repeated on further page loads.

I reckon that'll be fine.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Yup - 13s is highly acceptable.

Good move all round I think.

The menus are getting fairly close now in terms of classification.

See this test page: http://www.safespeed.org.uk/home1.html

Some comments on the classifications would be welcome. I'm so close to it I don't know what's what any more.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

Paul,

I'm liking this a lot - it certainly helps sort out where things are, and de-clutters the home page, a good move.

I'm not a designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I feel the menu's are a little "blocky" to look at, perhaps a bit "clunky". I don't know if anyone else agrees with me, and if they do I'm sorry I can't offer a solution, but it's what I think. Anyway seems to be going much better than of old.

Cheers

Paul

It's worth keeping the column heights down so that the whole menu fits on a 600-pixel high screen easily. This entails either splitting some columns into two or making each line item a shorter height.

It's well worth making the menu bar itself of a slightly different background colour to the rest of the site.