[Meta, Poll] Adding a pop-up menu system to the top of the screen.

[Michael Morris]

The browser change is a nice idea, but impractical - why should I adjust my browser on account of one site?

Let me turn your own statement around... Why should the site be adjusted for one user?

 

[Ashwyn]

Let me turn your own statement around... Why should the site be adjusted for one user?

Because people are more important than things?

 

[Morrus]

OK, folks, this is getting a little silly. It's just a nav bar and shouldn't matter to anyone *that* much.

TheSigil - what's yor objection to the nav bar other than possible mechanical problems? The latter I can understand, but I can't quite get to grips with your being so passionate about not having what - to you - will be a small line of text at the top of the page. It's less obtrusive than, say, a banner ad, and you probably ignore those all the time.

I fully agree that if, for some reason, it prevents anyone from accessing the site then it's not even an option. But if it can be a) a just ignored by people or b) include a script which means that if your browser can't handle it it won't appear, again I don't see what the objection is.

All that said, I have to warn you that this is getting far more "controversial" than I would deem appropriate for any other change I might make to the site - and I make changes frequently (as does any site owner). I appreciate peoples' opinions, certainly, but I do feel that that this is very much a non-issue.

 

[Dragongirl]

How about pros and cons?

Pro :
1) It will make navigation easier.

Con:
1) Since it does not work on every browser Morrus will have to maintain it and a normal menu effectively doubling the work of navigation.
2) Morrus will have to learn to script it or depend on someone else to always be around to change it whenever he wants.

 

[Michael Morris]

Because people are more important than things?

Is a person more important that people? And this thing happens to mean a lot to me Ashwyn, but no one seems to care about that. Many, like Sigil, don't care about anyone but themself.

 

[The Sigil]

TheSigil - what's yor objection to the nav bar other than possible mechanical problems? The latter I can understand, but I can't quite get to grips with your being so passionate about not having what - to you - will be a small line of text at the top of the page. It's less obtrusive than, say, a banner ad, and you probably ignore those all the time.

I agree... it's mostly a non-issue and I don't want to beat a dead horse. My objection is simply that I'm not a fan of people running their programs on my machines (that's not exactly a mechanical failure issue, but something close, I guess) - and javascript does that. Perhaps its a "compulsive" or "control" thing, but I want to know exactly what is being run on my computer. I guess it's a philosophical thing rather than a mechanical thing.

I've said my piece, I hope I'm not making it bigger than it is. I apologize if my posts made it become bigger than it is. It's a rather minor issue, it just happens to hit one of my pet peeves. That is all.

--The Sigil

 

[The Sigil]

Is a person more important that people? And this thing happens to mean a lot to me Ashwyn, but no one seems to care about that. Many, like Sigil, don't care about anyone but themself.

I can tell it's important to you... when any of us designs something, it is kind of like our "baby."

This just happened to hit on one of my pet peeves - people running *their* software on *my* machine (that's what javascript does, no?). I probably overreacted - but as I said, you just happened to hit one of my pet peeves and so by nature I'll be a little gripe-y.

Sorry if you took offense or if you feel I'm being selfish. You asked for your opinion, and for an explanation. I gave it to you... though I probably wasn't as nice as I could have been. For that, I'll apologize personally to you, Michael - I respect what you do on these boards are trying to do here - you're trying to make navigation easier.

To see it from my point of view, just imagine you had been hit by one too many self-installing cursors or hotbars or other things that javascript takes upon itself to do to your machine without your approval or knowledge and perhaps you'll be able to understand why I don't like it. We may not agree with each other, but hopefully we can understand each other and not get nasty. I'm sorry if my earlier posts seemed to be nasty. I was not trying to be nasty, but I can see that they may have come across that way.

Ah, the internet, land of text and no way to gauge inflection.

--The Sigil

 

[Ashwyn]

Is a person more important that people? And this thing happens to mean a lot to me Ashwyn, but no one seems to care about that. Many, like Sigil, don't care about anyone but themself.

I know it does, Michael, and I think you did a really good job. But I think that it might not be the most appropriate thing for ENWorld. And I don't think that if it doesn't get used here you should take it off of the Dusk site. I think you should keep it there no matter what. You made it, and should be proud of it. I would also like you to note that many people have either voted no or for it to be switchable. And I am curious, was this something you were asked to do, or something that you want to do? If it's the latter, you should probably take a step back for a while, and just wait and see what happens. I know that's hard to do with something you feel passionate about, but sometimes it's neccessary.

 

[Morrus]

I agree... it's mostly a non-issue and I don't want to beat a dead horse. My objection is simply that I'm not a fan of people running their programs on my machines (that's not exactly a mechanical failure issue, but something close, I guess) - and javascript does that. Perhaps its a "compulsive" or "control" thing, but I want to know exactly what is being run on my computer. I guess it's a philosophical thing rather than a mechanical thing.

I've said my piece, I hope I'm not making it bigger than it is. I apologize if my posts made it become bigger than it is. It's a rather minor issue, it just happens to hit one of my pet peeves. That is all.

--The Sigil

Fair enough!

 

[Michael Morris]

I can tell it's important to you... when any of us designs something, it is kind of like our "baby."

This just happened to hit on one of my pet peeves - people running *their* software on *my* machine (that's what javascript does, no?). I probably overreacted - but as I said, you just happened to hit one of my pet peeves and so by nature I'll be a little gripe-y.

I'm getting a little testy to, so I will also apologize.

I can understand your objection, particularly if we were talking about Active X or true JAVA. The former specifically is extremely unsecure - in college I played a prank on several professors by exploiting a whole in it to do mean things to their systems in a *proof* of concept...

JAVA has more limited access to the system's registerstries and is not *as* dangerous, but there are still security holes in the way IE handles it that can be exploited to attack a system.

JAVAscript also had holes in the version MSIE 4.x used. These have largely been patched, and the commands that allowed such attacks where never officially part of the scripting routine. As of the HTML 4.0 standards adoption (which is featured in MSIE 5.x and later and all "Gecko" browsers) the scripts where standardized. There is no danger anymore (At least with basic JAVAscript. Microsoft still uses unauthorized extensions to JAVA that are security breaches waiting to happen. But this script isn't written for MSIE in particular, and would have to be to do that attack).

This script is NOT dangerous. I have posted it to the META forums as a text file - examine it if you like - trust me there is nothing it can do to your system at all. I didn't even write it - it's the canned script provided with Macromedia Fireworks, and it is used on WotC's site - It's the same blasted script WotC uses!!

By the way SIGIL, by being on these boards you're running a JAVAscript. You do know that don't you??