by Patrick Chan
The XeoMenu applet takes an image and allows you to overlay menus on the image. You define hotbox areas on the image and when the user rolls the cursor into a hotbox, two things happen - first, the sub-image in the hotbox changes appearance and second, a menu of menu items appears.Here is a screenshot of the XeoMenu in action. The cursor was moved into the hotbox labeled "Where Can I Read About...!" which causes the hotbox to change (the copy becomes italics) and a menu of eight menu items to appear. In the screenshot, the cursor is currently over the menu item labeled "Tutorial" which causes the menu item to highlight. If the user now clicks on the menu item, the browser would go to the HTML page that describes the Online Java Tutorial.
Since the XeoMenu applet was built to Javasoft's specifications, the menus are not as general as you would like. In particular, the menu always appears to the right of the hotbox. Also, the labels of the menu items are always right justified. Finally, there is always an outline around each menu item. This applet might be extended someday to allow for more general layout but for now, you will have to modify the code if you want a different menu layout.
Here is the documentation for the applet parameters. All the parameters must be specified, even if they will not be used.
Parameters | Description | Example | ||||||||||||||
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image | names the file containing the background image and the rollover images. | <param name=image value="background.gif"> | ||||||||||||||
bg-color | specifies a color to paint behind the background image. This color is only visible if the background image has transparent pixels or if the applet is larger than the background image. | |||||||||||||||
separator | specifies the character used to separate items in menuX parameters. | <param name=separator value="|"> | ||||||||||||||
newline | specifies the character used to force a newline in a menu item. | <param name=separator value="^"> | ||||||||||||||
font | the font type to use for the menu items. There are only three possible values - Helvetica, TimesRoman, and Courier. | <param name=separator value="Helvetica"> | ||||||||||||||
font-height | the pixel height of the font to use for the menu items. | <param name=separator value="14"> | ||||||||||||||
marginh | the number of pixels to the left and right of the menu item labels. | <param name=marginh value="2"> | ||||||||||||||
marginv | the number of pixels above and below each menu item label. | <param name=marginv value="2"> | ||||||||||||||
fg-menu-color | the color to paint the text of the menu item labels. The color is specified by an RGB triplet of 3 decimal numbers in the range of 0-255. | <param name=fg-menu-color value="0 0 0"> | ||||||||||||||
fg-hi-menu-color | the color to paint the text of highlighted menu item labels. The color is specified by an RGB triplet of 3 decimal numbers in the range of 0-255. | <param name=fg-hi-menu-color value="255 255 255"> | ||||||||||||||
bg-menu-color | the color to paint the background of the menu items. The color is specified by an RGB triplet of 3 decimal numbers in the range of 0-255. | <param name=bg-menu-color value="0 255 0"> | ||||||||||||||
bg-hi-menu-color | the color to paint the background of highlighted menu items. The color is specified by an RGB triplet of 3 decimal numbers in the range of 0-255. | <param name=bg-hi-menu-color value="10 10 10"> | ||||||||||||||
target | if present, specifies the target frame that will show the new url. | <param name=target value="otherframe"> | ||||||||||||||
menuX | where X starts at 0 and
increases upward by 1. The value of this parameter is made up of 5 non-optional values, separated by the separator character describe above:
The values that follow the above non-optional 5 values specify the menu items for the menu. If no values are specified, no menu will appear when the cursor moves into the hotbox. The menu items are specified by pairs of values.
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<param name=menu0 value=" 0 0 148 18| 148 0 148 18| 0 0| d| /nav/whatis/index.html| Intro FAQ|/nav/whatis/introfaq.html| Java Story|/nav/whatis/index.html"> |
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cabbase | names the cab file. A cab file is a
compressed set of .class files that can be read by
Microsoft's Internet Explorer. See www.microsoft.com for more information about cab files |
<param name=cabbase value="xeomenu.cab"> |