[jsmenu-codedev] Fixing the IE6 bug: 'replace' not supported

[Morten W. <war...@on...>]

as I just mentioned on the yahoogroups mailing list the menu has a
back-button bug in IE6.  from what I've been able to test IE6 doesn't
support the 'replace' argument to document.open(), which the menu uses
to make sure the rewriting of the menu frame doesn't add to the
history list.  the call to document.open() is done in line 205 in the
CVS version:

    MTMDoc.open("text/html", "replace");

I'm not exactly sure how to go about fixing it, but I'm thinking along
the lines of using the IE method insertAdjacentHTML().  the thing is,
that when I first do things I prefer to do them well, so I am
considering wanting to rewrite the frame usage so that the menu uses
inserAdjacentHTML() to manipulate the document in IE6, and the W3C DOM
methods in Netscape 6/Mozilla.  I'm thinking along these lines:

1: have only one frame, it name is not important (but keeping it named
   'code' is probably a good idea), containing code.html
2: in code.html load code that identifies the browser, just like it
   does now
3: if IE4+ or NN6, wait to the document is loaded, then use the
   appropriate dHTML methods to populate the document according to the
   user setup, showing the menu
4: if NN3, NN4 or Opera5/6, output a frameset code containing two
   frames, one for the code, one for the menu, with appropriate unique
   names.  rename the parent frame to 'code' so the tracking code
   works, and make sure there's an object there pointing to
   MTMDisplayMenu()

if this is done, then it should be possible to have the menu running
without frames quite easily since the menu no longer needs the parent
frameset to function (if we keep the HTML target-attribute usage).
having an element in the document with an id of "mtmenu" that'll be
populated by the code should be all.  problem then is how to
expand/collapse submenus, but that's a later issue.

comments, anyone?


Morten!

-- 
"...a liquid which was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
  My opinions are not necessarily those of my provider,
  not necessarily mine, and probably not necessary.