Toggleapalooza

Sunday, April 16th, 2006

I was noticing last night, that at smaller screen sizes the readable area for the main content is pretty small, so I decided to make it possible to turn the side menus off one at a time, and expand the content area. In the menu at the top of the page you’ll see UM and UB buttons. Those buttons are used for turning off the UltraBob and UltraMom side menus respectively. One click will turn one off, and another will bring it back. Currently when you visit another page in the site the side menus will go back to how they were, and you’ll have to rehide them, but if you let me know that you like being able to turn them off, I’ll make it so the site will remember your settings for the side menu.

If the toggle doesn’t work in your browser (in particular I haven’t tested Internet Explorer on Windows) please let me know what browser and what version of it your are using. I know that it doesn’t work on Internet Explorer for the Mac, but I don’t know anybody who still uses Internet Explorer for the Mac so I’m not all that concerned about that.

Please give feedback, I’d really like to know if this helps anyone.

By UltraBob at 12:13 PM Link to this post here!
6 comment s


  • on April 16th, 2006 08:50 PM UltraHeather said:

    When I click on either UltraBob or UltraMom it toggles off the far right menu.  I can not get the other menu toggled off and it does not expand the main text area.  Maybe I am doing it wrong???

  • on April 16th, 2006 10:31 PM Kristen said:

    Clever solution.

    Firefox 1.5 Mac
    The UB & UM buttons work as expected but clicking either the UltraBob or UltraMom headers toggles only UltraBob. Content expands as expected.

  • on April 16th, 2006 10:54 PM UltraBob said:

    Wow, I knew the heading at the top of the menus would be the most intuitive way to turn them off, but since I hadn’t found a good way to turn them back on intuitively without going through the trouble of creating little buttons to reside and the right side of the page when the side menus were collapsed I had decided to leave the side menu functionality around, but not announce it just yet and see if anyone mentioned it.

    I now know where you most quickly turn for toggling the menus, and I’ve made it so that clicking the UltraMom menu expands the content area.  Also Heather, I suspect that the content expansion is fixed too.  I think it was probably just expanding the content behind the UltraMom menu.  Also, let me know what web browser you are using ok?  If it is Internet Explorer, great I need someone to test that out, but when you are done testing, go look at this post for some advice about what to use to look at web pages.  I’m really happy to see that you are still reading the site, and keep the comments coming!

  • on April 16th, 2006 11:08 PM UltraBob said:

    Oh yeah, and just to give some further instructions:

    Feel free to turn off the side menus by clicking the headers at the top of each one, but remember that there are buttons in the button section at the top of the main content area labelled ‘UM’ and ‘UB’ that will allow you to turn each side menu back on.

  • on April 17th, 2006 05:55 PM UltraHeather said:

    Of course I read your site!  Yes, I am indeed using internet explorer and it now turns the side windows off and back on, but does not expand the text area, sorry:(

  • on April 18th, 2006 03:22 PM UltraBob said:

    Hi Heather,

    Hmm, I just went and looked at it in Internet Explorer, and you are right, it doesn’t work does it.  In fact the menu only disappears for a second and then the page reloads.  To add insult to injury, the side menus aren’t even positioned correctly as it looks on my browser.  Even worse than that… I don’t care very much.  Internet Explorer is a crappy browser and people shouldn’t use it anymore unless they want their computer to be run over by spyware and viruses.  I still have to support Internet Explorer in work I do for my clients, but I don’t have to for this site.  I highly recommend that you go to http://www.mozilla.com right now and download the firefox browser.  Food will taste better, and colors will seem more vivid.  When I get some time, I’ll go try to figure out how to make my script work in Internet Explorer for my own intellectual fulfillment, but you won’t see the side menu positions improving unless I do it on accident.