Forum Moderators: not2easy
Do I need to add a nice caption telling people to "Click on the images for information" or something of that sort, or are imagemaps fairly well understood these days?
Personally, anytime I see a really huge graphic somewhere, I assume it must have some functional purpose, and spend a couple moments mousing over it to find links... but I may be strange.
Probably someone who is looking at that in the first place isn't going to need their hand held too awfully much. Simple explanation should suffice. I've never had a use for this yet but it looks really cool.
==============================================================
Script: Amazing Frameless Popup Window - Version I
Functions: In IE4 and later, this script launches a popup
window without the Windows frame or titlebar
(that is, a "containerless" window). In other
browsers, it launches a standard popup window.
Position, width, and height are settable.
Automatic closing of the window on leaving the
page may also be optionally set.
Browsers: IE4 and later
Degrades fully functionally in other browsers
Author: etLux
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STEP 1.
Inserting the <script> in your page
Put the following <script> </script> in the head
section of your launching page.
Set the variables as indicated in the script.
<script>
// Amazing Frameless Popup Window - Version I
// (C) 2000 www.CodeLifter.com
// Free for all users, but leave in this header
// set the popup window width and height
var windowW=214 // wide
var windowH=398 // high
// set the screen position where the popup should appear
var windowX = 260 // from left
var windowY = 100 // from top
// set the url of the page to show in the popup
var urlPop = "yourpage.html"
// set the title of the page
var title = "This Is A Frameless Popup Window"
// set this to true if the popup should close
// upon leaving the launching page; else, false
var autoclose = true
// ============================
// do not edit below this line
// ============================
s = "width="+windowW+",height="+windowH;
var beIE = document.all?true:false
function openFrameless(){
if (beIE){
NFW = window.open("","popFrameless","fullscreen,"+s)
NFW.blur()
window.focus()
NFW.resizeTo(windowW,windowH)
NFW.moveTo(windowX,windowY)
var frameString=""+
"<html>"+
"<head>"+
"<title>"+title+"</title>"+
"</head>"+
"<frameset rows='*,0' framespacing=0 border=0 frameborder=0>"+
"<frame name='top' src='"+urlPop+"' scrolling=auto>"+
"<frame name='bottom' src='about:blank' scrolling='no'>"+
"</frameset>"+
"</html>"
NFW.document.open();
NFW.document.write(frameString)
NFW.document.close()
} else {
NFW=window.open(urlPop,"popFrameless","scrollbars,"+s)
NFW.blur()
window.focus()
NFW.resizeTo(windowW,windowH)
NFW.moveTo(windowX,windowY)
}
NFW.focus()
if (autoclose){
window.onunload = function(){NFW.close()}
}
}
</script>
==============================================================
STEP 2.
Triggering the popup window
Call the openFrameless function from a link, like this:
<a href="javascript:openFrameless()">click here</a>
==============================================================
STEP 3.
Conditioning the page that goes in the popup window
Add the following call to the <body> tag of the page that
will open in the popup *if* your popup does not come to the
front after it loads. This is occasionally needed in early
versions of IE4, and with certain types of page content that
manipulate focus. If in doubt, put it in -- it can't hurt.
<body onload="top.window.focus()">
==============================================================
But do I have to find room in the text column to say "Click on System Components for more Information"? You'd be amazed at some of the questions we get through that site... I can't even assume folks will understand the diagram in the first place.... I guess captions would be safest. *bleh*
Maybe consider some way to set visual clues. Shades of gray for some of the backgrounds, or gray dotted lines along the divisions?
The original image is divided into 9 chunks, and set into a table... then each of those 9 'chunks' has it's own imagemap designating each item as a link. If you click on the box labeled "AC Fuse Panel or Breaker Box", a window will pop up explaining it....
So what should the caption read: "Click on each component to learn how it works" Or: "Click on each item to learn how it works" or something like that? So it specifically states that you have to select the individual items?
For some reason I like "click on any component..." more than "click on each...". Clicking on "each" sounds like a big chore.
But yes, I'd say you're in the right direction for a caption. How about moving that color code key to a less dominant spot, and using that space for the instruction?
That sounds right on the money. I thought your were restricted to the space we already see.
