Each of HyperActiveMenu Plus'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 HyperActiveMenu Plus'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
Increasing or reducing the width will make the buttons and main menus wider or narrower, thus allowing for longer Label and Entry strings. You'll usually want to make the applet as narrow as you can (to save page space!), but check that the text on your menus isn't being cut off. Browsers tend to vary a little in their spacing of text in Java™ applets. To be safe, check your pages in Netscape which applies rather more space to a line of text than Internet Explorer, or visitors to your page that use Netscape might be missing a view characters on the longer labels. You also need to be sure that trhe applet is wide enough to display your widest submenu in its entirety.
To judge the correct height, first click the button which displays the tallest main menu, and ensure that all buttons and menu entries are still visible with that main menu showing. YOu'll also need to click the main menu entry that displays the tallest submenu and make sure that all those submenu entries are visible.
Quick Tip: When setting up the applet dimensions, it's far easier if you use the BgColor parameter to temporarily set the applet background to a color that stands out from your page background. When you've reduced the dimensions as much as you can, return the BgColor setting to the color you wanted.
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.
Name
Specifies a unique name for an applet when used with the Cool Focus Satellite system. This name may be anything you like, but it should be the only applet currently running that has this name. If you're not using the Satellite system, you can ignore this parameter.
Satellites
A simple yes or no parameter that determines whether or not this applet should send mouse-move information to the Cool Focus Satellite system. If you are using Satellite, include this parameter with a value of 'yes'. If you're not, either set the value to 'no', or leave out this parameter. Setting this parameter to 'yes' when no Satellite is being used will have the effect of making the applet respond to the mouse extremely sluggishly.
DefaultTarget
HTML offers it's own range of recognized targets for links: _top, _self, _blank and _parent. But when you use an applet like HyperActiveMenu that can take countless 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 parameters. Just enter the name of this frame in the DefaultTarget parameter and it will be used by default for any entry on your menu that doesn't have its own Target parameter to override it.
The default setting for this parameter is _top, so if you leave this parameter out, any menu entry that doesn't have its own Target parameter will open its document full-screen in the current 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 (or a button if the button is acting as a link). 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.
BgColor
The applet's background color as a hex triplet. This is visible below the buttons when no menu is being displayed. For best results, set this to the same value as that of your page's body-background. The default is 000000 (black).
BgImage
The name (and path, if necessary) to a JPEG or GIF image to be placed behind the buttons and menus, covering the BgColor. This image is automatically tiled to fill the entire applet area. The image is visible below the buttons when no menu is open, and will be partly visible when the open menu is shorter than the available space. You'll also see the image as main menus slide in and out of view.
ButtonColor
Hex triplet for the color of the buttons. This is a 3D button, so it's best to stick with 'mid-range' colors such as C0C000 or 008080 to ensure that the applet can derive lighter and darker shades for the button-highlight and button-shadow. The default is C0C0C0 (silver).
LabelColor
A hex-triplet for the color of the button-labels' text when unfocused (the mouse isn't over the button). The default is 606060 (dark gray).
LabelFocusColor
The color of a button-label's text when focused (the mouse is over the button). The default is C00000 (mid-red).
LabelPressColor
The color of a button-label's text when the button is depressed (clicked, not sad). By default, this will be a darker shade of your selected LabelFocusColor unless you include this parameer to specify something different.
LabelSelColor
The color of the last-selected button-label's text. The default is C000C0 (mid-purple). The LabelSelColor (and EntrySelColor) act as a reminder to users of what they clicked last. If you'd prefer that the last-selected entry looked no different to any other, set this color to match your LabelColor, and set LabelSelReact to 'yes'.
LabelSelReact
A yes or no parameter with a default of yes. Set to this default, the selected button-label will act as if unselected when the mouse moves over it, indicating that it could be clicked again. If set to 'no', it will ignore all mouse movement (although it can still be clicked a second time).
MenuColor
The color of the main menus as a hex triplet. This is another 3D item, so apply the same guidelines as for ButtonColor. The default is C0C0C0 (silver). Of course, there's no reason why your buttons and menus should be the same color.
EntryColor
The color of the text for menu-entries on main menus and submenus when unfocused. The default is C0C0C0 (silver).
EntryFocusColor
The color of the text for a focused menu-entry. The default is C00000 (mid-red).
EntryPressColor
The color of the text for a menu-entry when clicked. The default is to use a darker shade of your chosen EntryFocusColor unless you include this parameter to specify something different.
EntrySelColor
Sets the color of the text for a main menu-entry after it has been clicked. The last-clicked entry will remain painted in this color until another entry is clicked to replace it or a button is clicked. The default color is C000C0 (mid-purple). Note that entries on submenus do not remain selected after being clicked, since submenus automatically close when the mouse moves out of them.
LabelFont
A comma-delimited string giving the name, style and size of the font you want to use for all button labels. The default settings are Dialog, plain, at size 12, which would be written as Dialog,plain,12. 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. You can adjust the ButtonHeight parameter to create a large enough button for large font sizes.
LabelFocusBold
A yes/no parameter, with a default of 'yes'. If set to 'yes', the button-label or menu-entry below the mouse will be painted in a bold version of your chosen LabelFont. (This will have a noticeable effect only if you haven't chosen 'bold' style for the font.)
LabelSelBold
Another yes/no parameter, also defaulting to 'yes', which determines whether the selected (last-clicked) button-label or main-menu entry should be painted in a bold version of your LabelFont.
EntryFont
Working in the same way as LabelFont, this is another comma-delimited value giving the name, style & size of the font to use for menu entries, with the default value Dialog,plain,12.
EntryFocusBold
This parameter works in exactly the same way as LabelFocusBold, but uses a bold version of the EntryFont and applies to main-menu and submenu entries.
EntrySelBold
This works in the same way as LabelSelBold, but uses the EntryFont and applies to main menu entries.
LabelAlign
A non-case-sensitive choice of left, center or right to set the alignment of the text-labels on the buttons. By default, labels are aligned to the left.
EntryAlign
A similar choice of left, center or right to set the alignment of the text-entries on main menus and submenus. By default, labels are aligned to the left. This also affects the position in which submenus will be placed: if entries are right-aligned, the submenus will explode from the right side of the applet; if entries are centered, the submenus will be centered in the applet.
ButtonHeight
Specifies the height of the buttons. The default height is 21. You can make the buttons taller or shorter by using this aprameter with a different value. You may wish to do this to save space on the page by making the buttons shorter, or to make them taller to cater for a larger LabelFont. If you use ButtonImages (see below), your ButtonHeight must be at least as tall as the images, and ideally 5 or 6 pixels taller.
ButtonImages
The name (and path if required) of a single JPEG or GIF image containing 6 icons to be placed on the buttons. This parameter is entirely optional - there's no requirement to use images on the buttons at all. To create this image, first create 6 images of identical width and height (their meanings are explained below). Then create an empty image the same height as these images but 6 times as wide. Paste the six images into this new one side by side, save it, and refer to it in this parameter.
The 6 images (from left to right) are used as follows:
Button3D
This parameter lets you choose whether buttons should have a 3D ('buttonized') appearance. The possible options are yes, focus, or no. The default is 'yes'. By default, then, each button will always appear 3D. If set to 'no', buttons will always be flat. The 'focus' option shows each button as flat, initially, and buttons gain 3D edges when the mouse moves over them. HyperActiveMenu Plus makes an excellent 'buttons-only' menu (ie. as a column of linking buttons with no menus ever appearing), and the focus option is most effective when used in this way. It may also look good if you set Menu3D to 'yes'.
Menu3D
A yes or no parameter, defaulting to 'yes'. This applies only to main menus, and allows you to choose whether they should appear as a raised 3D panel (the default) or flat. (Flat menus are most effective when Button3D is set to 'yes'.)
SubmenuOffset
This parameter determines the horizontal offset of submenus from main-menu entries. Its effect depends upon your choice of EntryAlign setting. If entries are aligned to the center, this parameter is ignored and submenus are center-aligned too. If entries are left aligned, submenus will also be left-aligned and indented from those entries by the number of pixels selected here. If entries are right-aligned, submenus will also be right-aligned and indented by this number of pixels from the right edge of those entries. The default offset is 10. This is also the minimum offset - any figure lower than 10 you enter here will be interpreted as 10.
SubmenuLowered
Submenus always have a 3D appearance, but this can be a raised or a lowered 3D panel. This is a yes or no parameter, with a default of 'yes' which gives a lowered panel. The panel color will always match you chosen MenuColor, but note that a lowered submenu will actually be adrker representation of that color.
SubmenuButtonized
This is another yes or no parameter, taking a default of 'yes'. It only has an effect if SubmenuLowered is set to 'yes' (its default). The resulting effect is that a 3D button will appear for submenu entries as the mouse passes over them.
UseDimmer
Yet another yes or no parameter, also taking a default of 'yes'. By default, when a submenu appears all button-labels and main-menu entries will be 'dimmed' apart from the selected button-label and main-menu entry. The dim-color is calculated automatically according to your various text, button and menu colors. As well as being an interesting and stylish effect (we hope!), it has the practical result of making the submenu more clearly readable. If you'd prefer that text was not dimmed when a submenu appears, include this parameter with a value of 'no'.
SelectedButton
By default, when HyperActiveMenu Plus starts, your visitors will see one or more buttons that they can click to display a menu or open a web page (or both). This parameter lets you specify that a particular button should be shown as 'selected' when the applet starts. If that button would open a main menu when clicked, the menu will also be opened. The value for this parameter will be a number, where 1 corresponds to the top button/menu. To return to the default of no visible menu on startup, either remove the parameter or set its value to 0.
SelectedEntry
If you've opted to use a SelectedButton, you might want to go a stage further and preselect an entry on the visible main menu too, perhaps to indicate to visitors that the page that this entry links to is already open in the main frame. Once again, the default value for this parameter is 0, meaning that no menu-entry is initially selected, and the values will be integers representing the entries where 1 corresponds to the first entry on the menu.
For this parameter to have an effect, the SelectedButton parameter must be set to something other than 0 so that a menu is opened (and it must contain the entry-number you're specifying as selected, of course!). The entry you specify as selected will be painted in EntrySelColor. If you include this parameter and your Selected Button is a linking button that doesn't have any menu entries to display, this parameter will be ignored.
ScrollAmount
This parameter, and ScrollDelay below, work in combination to set how fast main menus scroll into and out of view. In essence, they work in the same way as similarly-named attributes of the HTML <MARQUEE> tag: the menu scrolls by %scrollamount% pixels, then pauses for %scrolldelay% milliseconds, then repeats, and so on, until it reaches its final position. By fine-tuning the integer values of these parameters, it should always be possible to achieve a smooth scroll effect at any speed you need. The default value of this parameter is 6; ScrollDelay has a default of 10. To slightly increase scroll speed, reduce ScrollDelay to 8. To slightly decrease speed, increase ScrollDelay to 12 and/or reduce ScrollAmount to 4 or 5. In general, try to avoid increasing ScrollAmount too much to avoid a 'jump' animation.
ScrollDelay
See ScrollAmount above for details of this parameter.
SoundButtonDown
The path (if necessary) and name of a Sun/NeXT format (*.au) audio file to be played when a button is clicked. See Using Sounds, below. Paths to audio files are specified as URLs and may be either absolute or relative to the location of the current HTML page.
SoundButtonUp
The path (if necessary) and name of the audio file to be played when the clicked button is released. See Using Sounds, below.
SoundEntryDown
The path (if necessary) and name of the audio file to be played when a menu entry is clicked. See Using Sounds, below.
SoundEntryUp
The path (if necessary) and name of the audio file to be played when a clicked menu entry is released. See Using Sounds, below.
Using Sounds: HyperActiveMenu Plus is very forgiving in its sound support. If one or more of the four parameters above excluded (or their audio files can't be found) HyperActiveMenu Plus will still work properly. Therefore, if you only wish to have audio accompaniment for button-clicks (for example), simply remove the SoundEntryDown/Up parameters.
1-Label
In the example code to the left, we've just included parameters for the first button in the applet. You can add as many more buttons as you need by simply copying the 3 parameters and changing their "1-" prefix to "2-", "3-", etc. The URL and Target parameters corresponding to the Label are optional - include these only if the button should link somewhere when clicked. If the button should only cause a menu to be opened, the URL and Target parameters should be excluded.
The numbered Label parameter gives the text that should appear on the button. This text will be vertically centered on the button, but long text might crowd or overlap the ButtonImage (if you've chosen to use one) or be too wide for the applet. If so, just increase the applet's width or decrease the size of your LabelFont.
1-URL
Allows you to set a URL that should be opened when the button is clicked. A button can be used to display a menu, or to open a URL, or both. As an aid to testing, you can prefix your URLs with a dollar sign ($). You can then click the button without error messages appearing or being linked elsewhere. Don't forget to remove these dollar signs before publishing your pages, though!
1-Target
Sets the frame- or window-name into which the button's URL should be opened. If a button has a URL parameter and has no corresponding Target parameter, the target specified in the DefaultTarget parameter will be used instead.
Remember that frame names are case-sensitive. If you're trying to make something open in a frame and your browser persists in opening a new window for it instead, check that the case and spelling of the name match in the Target parameter and in your HTML <frameset> tag. Recent editions of Internet Explorer seem to have introduced some quirks in frame naming, meaning tha hyphens and underscores are best avoided.
L-Entryn
In the example code to the left, we've created a main-menu that will appear when the top button is clicked (in fact, it's the only button!). It contains 4 entries. Parameter names for main-menu entries are constructed by taking the number prefix of the button which opens the menu (in this case, 1), followed by a hyphen, and Entry1, Entry2, Entry3, etc. You can create as menu entries on a main menu as you like. The 'Entry' parameter specifies the text that should appear on the menu for this entry.
Unlike buttons, which can both link somewhere and open a main menu, menu entries can do one or the other. Therefore, 1-Entry4 has no URL or Target parameters - instead it opens a submenu when clicked (see below).
As 1-Entry3 demonstrates, you can place a separator anywhere you like to group entries just by typing a hyphen. This creates a 3D-indented line across the menu. (For compatibility with HyperActiveMenu Professional, you can also enter &sp for a separator.) Separators don't react to mouse movement or clicks, so no corresponding URL or Target parameter is included for this item.
L-URLn
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 your URLs with a dollar sign ($). You can then click the applet without error messages appearing or being linked elsewhere, but don't forget to delete those $ signs before publishing the page.
L-Targetn
Allows you to specify a frame- or window-name into which this main-menu Entry's URL link should be opened. Once again, the number after 'Target' corresponds with an Entry number. If a URL parameter exists and has no corresponding Target parameter, the target used will be the DefaultTarget.
L-E-Entryn
In the example code opposite, we've created a submenu that will open when 1-Entry4 is clicked. This submenu contains 4 entries, the 3rd of which is a non-reactive separator. Parameter names for submenus are created by taking the number of the currently-selected button (in this case 1), the clicked main-menu entry (in this case 4) and Entry1, Entry2, Entry3, and so on. The 'Entry' parameter specifies the text that should appear on the submenu for this entry.
L-E-URLn
The URL of the page you want the correspondingly-numbered 'Entry' to fetch when clicked. This works in the same way as the URL parameter for Labels and main-menu Entries explained above.
L-E-Targetn
The frame- or window-name into which this submenu Entry's URL link should be opened. This works in the same way as the Target parameter for Labels and main-menu Entries explained above.
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