Each of ClassicMenu's parameters is explained below, with reference to the clickable example code in the left frame: you can click a parameter from the example code to jump to its explanation, or simply read this page from top to toe. As you read, click the red references to other parameters to jump to them.
Most of ClassicMenu's parameters have a default setting which is mentioned below. If the default setting is the option you'd like to use in your own implementation, you can leave that parameter out of your HTML code.
The 'Archive' attribute & 'CabBase' parameter
JAR (Java ARchive) and CAB (cabinet) files are archives containing Java class files in compressed form, making them easier to handle and quicker to download. Most modern browsers are able to read one or other of these formats, and the Archive attribute and CabBase parameter tell the browser the name of the archive file to open. The .JAR, .CAB and .CLASS files must all be in the same directory, and the CODEBASE= attribute is used in the normal way, if required, specifying the absolute or relative location of this directory. Older browsers that are unable to read either the JAR or the CAB file will instead read the loose CLASS files.
Applet Width & Height
Setting the applet width is a simple job: after setting up your Label parameters, ClassicMenu will create a menubar that's the perfect length to hold these menus. Thus, even if you set your applet to be several million pixels in width, the length of the menubar will be just right. So all you need to do is to make sure that your applet width is at least wide enough to see the right-hand edge of the right-most menu when it's open.
Because ClassicMenu counts the Label and Entry parameters in your HTML code to determine the number of menus and the number of entries on each, setting the height is of the applet is equally easy. ClassicMenu will create menus that are exactly the right height to display all their entries at your chosen font size. All you need to do is ensure that the applet height is sufficient to display the longest menu. Any 'dead space' below the menu will be filled with your chosen BgColor or BgImage, although you'll probably want to reclaim this wasted real estate by minimzing the applet height as much as possible.
When minimizing the height of the applet, bear in mind that Netscape Navigator 4.x creates far more space between each entry than is usual. To ensure that all visitors to your site can see all menu entries, check your ClassicMenu implementation in Navigator and alter the applet-height as necessary.
TIP: When determining the best dimensions for the applet, it's easiest to temporarily set BgColor to a color that stands out from your page background.
Copyright
This parameter must be included or the applet will not run, whether registered or unregistered. To prevent mistakes we recommend that you copy/paste it into your code from the Getting Started page: it is case-sensitive, single-spaced throughout and should appear on a single line. If there's a problem with this parameter, you'll see a status-bar message that reads "Copyright parameter missing or incorrect" which should lead you to the problem.
BgColor
The applet's background color as a hex triplet. For best results, set this to the same value as that of your page's body-background (even if you'll be placing a BgImage over the top of it). If you use a BgImage of GIF format that uses transparency, the transparent color in the image will be replaced by your chosen BgColor. The default is FFFFFF (white).
BgImage
Specifies the name (and location if necessary) of an optional GIF or JPEG image to be used as the applet background. Location is given as a relative or absolute URL, just as with the HTML <IMG SRC=> tag. The image is placed beneath the beneath the menubar and is sized and positioned according to your ScaleImage setting. The intention of this parameter is that a page banner or logo can be placed here, thus making use of some otherwise wasted real estate.
ScaleImage
In conjunction with BgImage, this parameter takes one of four possible values:
yes: The image will be placed below the menubar, in the area when the menus themselves appear. The image will be scaled to the exact dimensions of the applet (less the menubar area). Note that this may contort an image beyond all recognition!no: The image will be placed immediately below the menubar and aligned with the left of the applet. It will not be scaled, so the surrounding area will be colored in BgColor if the image is smaller than the available area.
fullsize: The image will be scaled to applet dimensions and will fill the whole applet area including the menubar. Your menubar labels will be placed over the background image.
menubar: The image will be scaled to the dimensions of your menubar and will replace your chosen MenubarColor.
The default value for this parameter is Yes.
MenubarHeight
The height of the menubar (the only thing that's visible when the applet starts). The default height is 18. You may wish to increase or decrease this to allow for a larger or smaller MenubarFont (or indeed just for aesthetic reasons).
MenubarColor
The color of the menubar as a hex triplet. The default is C0C0C0 (gray).
MenubarFont
A comma-delimited string giving the name, style and size of the font you want to use for all menubar labels. The default settings are Dialog, in plain, at size 13, which would be written as Dialog,plain,13. Two important things to note: first, there must be no spaces in this entry; second, the three items must appear in the order name,style,size. Note that the style part of this setting can be plain, bold, italic or bolditalic, and these are not case-sensitive. Choosing a smaller font will allow you to fit more Labels (and therefore more menus) into your screen-width. The spacing between each label is preset.
LabelColor
The color of the menubar Labels, as a hex triplet. The default is 000000 (black).
LabelFocusColor
The color of the focussed menubar Label (ie. the one the pointer is over or the one whose menu is visible). The default is FFFFFF (white).
EntryFont
Another comma-delimited string giving the name, style and size of the font you want to use for all menu entries. The default string is Dialog,plain,12, and the parameter works exactly as that for MenubarFont above.
EntryColor
The color of the entries on the menus. The default is 000000 (black).
EntryFocusColor
The color of a menu entry when focussed (ie. the pointer passes over it). The default is FFFFFF (white).
EntryPressColor
The color of a menu entry when the mouse button is depressed over it. (Depressed as in 'clicked', unless you have a neurotic mouse button.) The default is C0C0C0 (gray).
SelectbarColor
The color of the selection-bar that follows the mouse over the menus. The default color is 000080 (navy blue). As in Windows®, you can get rid of the selectbar by making this color the same as the MenuColor.
MenuColor
The color of the menus themselves. By default, the menus will take whatever color you've chosen for MenubarColor, above, since this provides a more 'normal' looking applet. Of course you can override this by entering a hex triplet for this parameter.
3DMenus
Another non-case-sensitive yes or no value, the default being yes. The 3D menu gives the usual Windows® 95/98/NT look. Selecting the 'no' option makes the menu just a plain colored rectangle - this is pretty ugly, but it gives you the opportunity to effectively make the menu invisible by making its color the same as the BgColor, so that only the menu entries themselves are visible. A third option for this parameter is outline (again not case-sensitive), which places a 3D box around the edges of the menu in your chosen MenuColor.
DefaultTarget
HTML offers it's own range of recognized targets for links: _top, _self, _blank and _parent. But when you use an applet like ClassicMenu that can take a fair number of links, you'll often be opening your pages into a main frame in your browser, perhaps called 'Main', so almost every entry on the menu will need a Target parameter with the value "Main". The DefaultTarget parameter gives you a way to avoid entering all those identical parameters. Just enter the name of your most-used frame in the DefaultTarget parameter and it will be used by default for any entry on your menus that doesn't have its own Target parameter to override it.
The default setting for this parameter is _self, so if you leave this parameter out, any menu entry that doesn't have its own Target parameter will open its document over the top of the menu's frame or window.
UseHandCursor
A yes or no parameter that determines whether or not a typical 'web-style' hand cursor is used when the mouse moves over an entry on the menu. The default value is yes, so you need include this parameter only if you want to set it to 'no' and stick to the default pointer. This feature is applied only when an applet is running in a Java 1.1-compatible browser (Internet Explorer 4x or higher, Netscape Navigator 4.07 or higher). In other browsers, this parameter is ignored and the default pointer will be used.
Label1, Label2, . . ., Label150
The text labels to appear on the menubar for each menu. Each label can be as long as you wish, and the menubar will automatically be sized accordingly. In the example code to the left, you can see that Labels for 4 menus have been specified.
1-Entry1, 1-Entry2, . . ., 1-Entry150
The clickable text-strings to appear on the menu. You can have up to 150 entries on each menu, which will be placed on that menu according to the numerical suffix (1 to 150).
1-URL1, 1-URL2, . . ., 1-URL150
The URL of the page you want the correspondingly-numbered Entry to fetch when clicked. This may be an absolute URL ("http://www.fishing.net/tangled/") or a relative URL ("../../another/page.htm"). Note that although Java does support #name anchors appended to URLs (to link to particular parts of a page), not all browsers will react correctly to it, so its use is generally best avoided.
As an aid to testing, you can prefix a URL with the dollar sign ($, as in the example code to the left) which will prevent it linking anywhere when clicked.
1-Target1, 1-Target2, . . ., 1-Target150
A text-string specifying the name of the frame or window in which you want the correspondingly-numbered URL to open. If you leave out the Target parameter for a menu entry, its URL will be opened in the frame or window specified by the DefaultTarget parameter.
1-Message1, 1-Message2, . . ., 1-Message150
A text-string you want displayed in the browser's statusbar when the mouse passes over the corresondingly-numbered Entry, usually giving some clue to the linked page. If you leave out the Message parameter for an entry, the message 'Link to' followed by the corresponding URL will be shown. If you prefer to have no message shown in the statusbar, include the Message parameter and place nothing between the quotes (ie. <param name=1-Message4 value="">).
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