Menu Tree for Distributable DVD-ROM?

[rjpa...@gmail.com]

Hi:
I'm considering the purchase of Art HTML Listing. The features seem
to be close to what I need: (1) The ability to build predefined,
collapsible folder listings by scanning a folder structure; and (2)
Browser based client-side processing for maximum compatibility.

Here's my project. I am preparing a DVD for distribution that
contains thousands of images in hundreds of folder nodes. I would
like to provide the user a static, collapsible menu tree in an html
page for more efficient access to the images. The html page will be
accessed through an autorun menu. The benefit is that the pre-built
menu tree should perform much more quickly than simply scanning the
DVD folder tree in Windows Explorer or any other file manager. DVD
access will only occur when an image link is selected, with the image
opening in whatever default program defined by the OS for the file
type.

To accomplish this the image links need to be relative to the primary
image folder, not an absolute path. A user's DVD drive letter will
vary from user to user. Is Art HTML Listing capable of building these
type links?

And just to be certain, Art HTML Listing is pure client side html and
java? The menus can run from a standalone DVD package using standard
browser functions without the need for server-side help?

Thanks for your help.
Randy

[Paul (ZZEE)]

> I'm considering the purchase of Art HTML Listing. The features seem
> to be close to what I need: (1) The ability to build predefined,
> collapsible folder listings by scanning a folder structure; and (2)
> Browser based client-side processing for maximum compatibility.

It can do that.

> access will only occur when an image link is selected, with the image
> opening in whatever default program defined by the OS for the file
> type.

Typically it will open right in the webbrowser where they are viewing this
listing file.

> To accomplish this the image links need to be relative to the primary
> image folder, not an absolute path. A user's DVD drive letter will
> vary from user to user. Is Art HTML Listing capable of building these
> type links?

Yes, it can create both relative and absolute links. The "Expandable /
Collapsible Tree" template uses relative URLs, since listings are supposed
to be used on a webserver where paths may be different from the computer
on which a listing file is built.

Anyway, if any template is using absolute paths, to convert them to
relative you need to edit the template, and replace "relurl" with
"absurl". Then save the template file and rebuild the listing.

> And just to be certain, Art HTML Listing is pure client side html and
> java? The menus can run from a standalone DVD package using standard
> browser functions without the need for server-side help?

Yes, this is a standalone HTML file, and doesn't need any server side
help. The only thing you need to adjust is to place icons that come with
the program (or your own) in a directory relative to the listing file you
create, and put this relative path into the Options > "Path to icons" box.
Then you also need to copy this directory onto your DVD, so that the
relative path from the listing file to icons directory is kept.

Hope this helps.

[rjpa...@gmail.com]

Sounds perfect. I'll purchase and give it a go. Your comment about
the image link opening in the browser I had not considered. Actually
that might be better for cross-platform use. Can the link be set for
for "blank" in order to open a new browser window for the image? It
also opens up other possibilities, such as a java based image popup.
There are some fairly robust popup scripts around designed for images;
however, this level of link scripting may not be possible yet. If I'm
wrong let me know.

Thanks again. I'll keep you posted.

[Paul (ZZEE)]

> Sounds perfect. I'll purchase and give it a go. Your comment about
> the image link opening in the browser I had not considered. Actually
> that might be better for cross-platform use. Can the link be set for
> for "blank" in order to open a new browser window for the image?

Sure, just add target="_blank" to the template on line # 110.

It
> also opens up other possibilities, such as a java based image popup.

You can add there onclick event handler which needs to return false to
prevent link to be open normally.

> There are some fairly robust popup scripts around designed for images;
> however, this level of link scripting may not be possible yet. If I'm
> wrong let me know.

You can put any javascript into the template, including a function that
will create pop-up windows. If you need image size at some point, you
won't be able to get it via javascript, so you need to get it via Art HTML
Listing ZZI variables imageWidth and imageHeight when building a listing.
I.e. you need to modify the template, so your function call will look
like:

onclick="return someFunc('<!--#echoe var='relURL'-->', <!--#echo
var='imageWidth'-->, <!--#echo var='imageHeight'-->);"

[rjpa...@gmail.com]

Thanks for the tips. I'll be testing the trial version as my schedule
permits in the days ahead. I'm confident that it's going to be
exactly what I need. (After you answer another dozen questions of
course....LOL).
Randy

[rjpa...@gmail.com]

Paul:
I was able to successfully generate my large index file. Roughly
5MB. I decided on using a simple two column frameset rather than a
popup. Index is on the left, target the right. It works pretty
smoothly in Firefox, although it takes about 30 seconds for the menu
to load and become "active". No surprise given the size of the html
file. Clicking on an image link pulls from the DVD very quickly.

The bad news is that IE simply chokes on the file and goes into an
unresponsive state. It runs ok in IE from the HDD although I can't
seem to disable the annoying Active X warning (the menu doesn't
collapse until the warning is acknowledged). I've tested IE on two
different Vista computers with the same results. Any ideas with IE?

By the way I'm using the "Expandable / Collapsible Tree" template with
very little tweaking. That probably doesn't matter though.

Oh, one more thing. I'm not a CSS guru but I think it's possible to
set image height/width in css rather than have each html link set the
various plus/minus/folder gif sizes. With over 11,000 links it seems
that this could condense my file size 5-10%, maybe more. It might
even help loading times slightly. I'll do some testing and see what I
come up with.

Randy

[Paul (ZZEE)]

> I was able to successfully generate my large index file. Roughly
> 5MB. I decided on using a simple two column frameset rather than a
> popup. Index is on the left, target the right. It works pretty
> smoothly in Firefox, although it takes about 30 seconds for the menu
> to load and become "active". No surprise given the size of the html
> file. Clicking on an image link pulls from the DVD very quickly.

> The bad news is that IE simply chokes on the file and goes into an
> unresponsive state. It runs ok in IE from the HDD although I can't

Does it choke only if being run from the DVD?

> seem to disable the annoying Active X warning (the menu doesn't
> collapse until the warning is acknowledged). I've tested IE on two
> different Vista computers with the same results. Any ideas with IE?

Starting from version 6 IE has this warning when you have any Javascript
on a page which is loaded from the local computer file system. This local
computer zone is considered by Microsoft to be dangerous, and that a
script running from the local computer may cause more harm than running
from a remote server.

Anyway, perhaps there is a way to get round it, put this HTML comment

<!-- saved from url=(0043)http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx -->

between the <!DOCTYPE ...> and <html ...> tags at the top of this template
or right into the listing HTML file. So the top of your file needs to look
like:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<!-- saved from url=(0043)http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx -->
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

Then save it and reload in the browser. After that IE will treat the page
as being from Internet or Trusted security zones and will not limit
Javascript there.

> Oh, one more thing. I'm not a CSS guru but I think it's possible to
> set image height/width in css rather than have each html link set the
> various plus/minus/folder gif sizes. With over 11,000 links it seems
> that this could condense my file size 5-10%, maybe more. It might
> even help loading times slightly. I'll do some testing and see what I
> come up with.

You are right and you can do that, but this will be applied to all images
then. To limit it to certain type of images you will have to use "class"
attribute, i.e.:

img.icon1 { border: none; width: 11px; height: 11px; }
img.icon2 { border: none; width: 24px; height: 24px; }

and then put class="icon1" into plus and minus images and class="icon2"
into other icons, removing "width", "height" and "border" attributes from
<img> tags.

You can also remove the "alt" attribute.

[rjpa...@gmail.com]

Paul:
The CSS changes saved about 5%. Not bad. File size is about 4.75MB.
The final index file is 185000 lines although half or more are blank
lines. Any way to trim the blank lines? I don't see anything in the
template that actually creates the blank lines.

I tried the Doctype change and it apparently isn't helping. With the
change, IE simply hangs while running from HDD. The index will start
without the Doctype change and local internet settings at low.
However loading doesn't quite finish then IE hangs. I think I'm
giving up on IE.

Firefox works beautifully and I found this interesting workaround
using Firefox Portable (see page 2).
https://www.indigorose.com/forums/showthread.php?p=103856
I can just call the index as the homepage from the DVD. Firefox
Portable fires up and the index starts without issues. Not exactly a
perfect solution but it does work. It does somewhat defeat cross
platflorm compatibility. Firefox Portable only runs in Windows.
Linux and Mac users will need to call index.html directly. Next I'll
fire up Virtual Box and try the index in Ubuntu.

Randy

[Paul (ZZEE)]

Randy,

> The CSS changes saved about 5%. Not bad. File size is about 4.75MB.
> The final index file is 185000 lines although half or more are blank
> lines. Any way to trim the blank lines? I don't see anything in the
> template that actually creates the blank lines.

Blank lines are there in the template, edit the template file and remove
newlines where possible. In particular, around "for" loops.

> I tried the Doctype change and it apparently isn't helping. With the
> change, IE simply hangs while running from HDD. The index will start
> without the Doctype change and local internet settings at low.

No, you didn't need to change the doctype, you needed to insert a
comment line between the doctype declaration and <html> tag. Internet
Explorer uses such comments to change zone for files on computer disk.

> However loading doesn't quite finish then IE hangs. I think I'm
> giving up on IE.
>
> Firefox works beautifully and I found this interesting workaround
> using Firefox Portable (see page 2).
> https://www.indigorose.com/forums/showthread.php?p=103856
> I can just call the index as the homepage from the DVD. Firefox
> Portable fires up and the index starts without issues. Not exactly a
> perfect solution but it does work. It does somewhat defeat cross
> platflorm compatibility. Firefox Portable only runs in Windows.

But on Linux there is no IE. Usually people have Firefox as their
default browser there.

[rjpa...@gmail.com]

On Feb 6, 1:26 pm, "Paul \(ZZEE\)" <gro...@zzee.com> wrote:
> Randy,
>
> > The CSS changes saved about 5%.  Not bad.  File size is about 4.75MB.
> > The final index file is 185000 lines although half or more are blank
> > lines.  Any way to trim the blank lines?  I don't see anything in the
> > template that actually creates the blank lines.
>
> Blank lines are there in the template, edit the template file and remove
> newlines where possible. In particular, around "for" loops.

Thanks. I'll give it a try. Maybe I can trim another 5%!

>
> > I tried the Doctype change and it apparently isn't helping.  With the
> > change, IE simply hangs while running from HDD.  The index will start
> > without the Doctype change and local internet settings at low.
>
> No, you didn't need to change the doctype, you needed to insert a
> comment line between the doctype declaration and <html> tag. Internet
> Explorer uses such comments to change zone for files on computer disk.

My explanation was poor. I was generically referring to the doctype
area. I actually inserted the headers as you provided in the earlier
posting, including the comment. There's obviously more going on with
IE then just the Active X warning. It's probably just choking on the
file size. Out of curiosity I'll run some tests using only a small
portion of my folder tree and post back the results.

>
> > However loading doesn't quite finish then IE hangs.  I think I'm
> > giving up on IE.
>
> > Firefox works beautifully and I found this interesting workaround
> > using Firefox Portable (see page 2).
> >https://www.indigorose.com/forums/showthread.php?p=103856
> > I can just call the index as the homepage from the DVD. Firefox
> > Portable fires up and the index starts without issues.  Not exactly a
> > perfect solution but it does work.  It does somewhat defeat cross
> > platflorm compatibility.  Firefox Portable only runs in Windows.
>
> But on Linux there is no IE. Usually people have Firefox as their
> default browser there.

Yes, that's a good thing. I'll instruct Linux / Mac users to go
directly to the html file rather than firing up the Firefox version on
the DVD. Given the relatively small non-Windows base I don't think
it's necessary to provide multiple Firefox versions on the DVD. Of
course all users can use their native file manager or image viewer to
browse the DVD contents. I just like to provide different options,
something a bit unique.

Randy