The Parameters Explained             

SurfStrip's parameters are 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.

Most of SurfStrip'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
SurfStrip contains several individual components - the drop-down menu, the Preview panel and the image-button. Advising on applet dimensions isn't an exact science since the width of the menu will change according to the length of your Entries, and we don't know how large your button images are.

However, assuming that you want SurfStrip to fit in the smallest possible top or bottom 'strip' frame, you'll probably set Lines to '1', set the applet height to 40, and make sure that your images are no more than about 34 pixels high. You can then extend the width of the menu to the full width of the browser (allowing for the fact that some people still work at 640×480, so you might want to consider 600 pixels to be the maximum width).

If you're not worried about minimizing SurfStrip's height, here are a few useful points to know about layout:

  • The drop-down Menu is vertically centered in the applet, and fixed at 8 points from the left edge of the applet. (The 'drop-down' menu actually 'drops up' if you place it at the bottom of a window.) It will adjust its width according to the length of your longest menu Entry.

  • The Image button is placed a few pixels to the right of the Menu, and vertically centered between top and bottom of the applet. You may need to increase applet height for large button images.

  • The Preview panel is placed a few pixels to the right of the button (SurfStrip knows how large your button images are) and extends to 8 pixels from the right edge of the applet. Thus, increasing the applet width automatically widens the Preview panel. Like the other two components, the Preview panel is vertically centered. Its height will always be just right to display your chosen number of Lines using your chosen Font; increasing either of these will make the Preview panel taller so you may need to increase your applet height.

    • 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
    This optional parameter is used to specify a unique name for an instance of an applet on a site when the Spytracking feature is used, explained in greater detail in Using Spytracking. If you're not using Spytracking, you can ignore this parameter.

    BgColor
    A hex triplet specifying the background color of the applet. You might set this to something that contrasts with your page backround to place SurfStrip in a 3D panel (if 3DBorder is set to 'yes'), or choose the same color as your page so that it blends into the page. This color also determines the color of the Preview area's internal 3D border. The default background color is C0C0C0 (silver gray).

    3DBorder
    A simple yes or no to whether a 3DBorder should be drawn around the applet to create a defined 'panel' for it. The default setting is yes.

    FillColor
    The color of the Preview panel's background, with a default of 000000 (black). The Preview area has a 3D indent effect; the 3D edging of this area is drawn in colors derived from your choice of BgColor.

    Lines
    The number of lines of text that the Preview panel should be able to display. The default is 2. Note that SurfStrip determines the precise height of the panel according to your Font size - if you change the size of the font, the panel's height will also change. NOTE: check that all your Display entries really do fit into this number of lines (especially in browsers such as Netscape which apply more space per character and line). If the autowrapping feature needs more lines for your text than the Preview panel can display, those extra lines won't be shown. You can get around this by increasing applet width, or reducing font size, or increasing both the Lines value and (if necessary) the applet height.

    If you'd prefer not to display any descriptions, set this parameter to "0". The Preview panel will be removed and you can delete parameter relating to it (such as Display and FillColor params).

    DefaultTextColor
    The color of the text shown in the Preview area. The default color is 00C000 (green). The color you specify here will be used for any Display text that doesn't have its own custom TextColor.

    ListFillColor
    The background color of the drop-down menu. The default is 000000 (black).

    ListTextColor
    The color of the text Entries shown in the drop-down menu. The default is 00C000 (green). This parameter will only have effect if MatchColors is switched off (ie. set to 'no').

    MatchColors
    A yes or no parameter with a default value of yes. If set to 'yes', the ListTextColor parameter will be ignored, and the text Entries in the drop-down menu will always match the colors of the currently selected Display text. (Even if you've chosen not to display descriptions by setting Lines to '0', this parameter and and the TextColor parameters are still active and can still be used.)

    Font
    A comma-delimited string giving the name, style and size of the font you want to use for the text. The default settings are Dialog, in 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.

    DefaultTarget
    When using any menu applet you need to be able to choose different frame names for each link. This normally means that for every entry on the menu you need a URL and a Target parameter. However you'll want most of these links to open in one particular frame, meaning that almost all of these Target parameters would be identical. The DefaultTarget parameter gives you a way to leave out all those identical Target parameters. Simply enter the name of the frame or window into which most (or all) of the links should open; this frame-name will then be used by default for any link that doesn't have its own Target parameter. The default setting for this parameter is _self.

    PlainImage
    SurfStrip requires an image button if it's to link anywhere, which at the very least means that you must use one image. This parameter specifies the name and (if necessary) the location of the plain image as an absolute or relative URL. This is the image used when the mouse is not inside the image area. If the image uses GIF transparency, the transparent color will be replaced by your chosen BgColor. Each of the 3 images used should have the same dimensions.

    OverImage
    The name and location (if necessary) of the button image to be shown when the button is focussed (the mouse is over it). If this parameter is missing, the image specified in the PlainImage parameter will be used instead.

    PressedImage
    The name and location of the image to be used when the image-button is clicked. If this parameter is missing, the image specified in the PlainImage parameter will be used instead.

    SoundSelect
    Specifies the path (if necessary) and name of the Sun/NeXT format (.au) audio file to be played when a menu entry is selected. The location of the file is treated exactly as a URL: you might enter only a filename (if the file is in the current directory), a relative location (such as ../sounds/daftsound.au) or an absolute location (such as http://www.server.com/folder/subfolder/daftsound.au). See the note about Using Sounds, below.

    SoundButtonDown
    Specifies the path (if necessary) and name of the Sun/NeXT format (.au) audio file to be played when the Image button is clicked, following the same rules as above. See the note about Using Sounds, below.

    SoundButtonUp
    Specifies the path (if necessary) and name of the audio file to be played when the Image button is released. The same details apply as to those above, of course. See the note about Using Sounds, below.

    NOTE - Using Sounds: SurfStrip is forgiving in its sound-support. If you exclude one or more of the three parameters above (or include them but forget to upload the audio files!), SurfStrip will continue quite happily (but silently). This means that if you choose to use fewer than the three possible sounds, you can simply remove their parameters and SurfStrip will play sounds only for the events that have a parameter.

    Entry1, Entry2, . . . Entry200
    The menu entries that should appear on the List. Up to 200 entries can be included, and they'll be placed on the list in numerical order. The number suffixes don't have to be sequential: it's quite valid to have a four-entry menu using the parameters Entry3, Entry57, Entry132, Entry198 if you really want to. Note that the number suffixes of the URL/Target/Display parameters below must match their corresponding Entry parameter, so you'd also need to include Display3, Display57, Display132, Display198.

    TextColor1, TextColor2, . . . TextColor200
    A hex triplet specifying the color of the text used to show the correspondingly-numbered Display text. If this parameter is missing, the DefaultTextColor will be used to display this text. If MatchColors is set to 'yes' (its default), the same color will be used to redraw the text on the menu.

    Display1, Display2, . . . Display200
    The text to be shown in the Preview panel when the corresponding menu entry is selected. This text will be wrapped automatically to fit within the Preview panel according to the size and style of Font used and the width of the Preview panel. You can display up to 100 lines of text here (although if you did, the result could hardly be described as a 'strip' menu anymore!).

    URL1a, URL2a, . . . URL200a
    The URL to which the correspondingly-numbered Entry should link when clicked. An Entry can link to up to four URLs when clicked, bringing the b, c and d suffixes into play. As you can see in the example code to the left, Entry6 links to 3 URLs, so there are URL6 parameter with the 'a', 'b' and 'c' prefixes.

    There are two points to bear in mind about using multiple URLs. First, the URLs will be fetched one at a time (although they should appear almost simultaneously) in the abcd order. This leads to the second point: if one of those URLs will load a page over the top of the applet, the applet must stop running. Therefore, if you're trying to load 4 pages, using all four URL parameters, and your URL2b parameter is the one that loads over the applet, the URL2c and URL2d links won't work - the applet stops running before it can process the requests!

    As an aid to testing your image buttons, you can prevent the applet linking anywhere when the button is clicked by prefixing URLs with a dollar sign ($). Remember to remove it before uploading your page though!

    Target1a, Target2a, . . . Target200a
    The frame or window target names into which the correspondingly-numbered URLs should be opened. Any URL that doesn't have a matching Target parameter will use the one specified in the DefaultTarget parameter instead. As you can see from the code in the left frame, Entry6 has 3 URLs (URL6a, URL6b and URL6c). URL6a uses the DefaultTarget, but separate target names are specified for URL6b and URL6c by including the Target6b and Target6c parameters.




































    .