NEW: PixoPoint Menu plugin

[imported_Ryan]

Any of you who are interested in [s:c1jm6snt]alpha[/s:c1jm6snt] beta testing a new plugin for adding a menu to your WordPress powered site should take a look at our new PixoPoint Menu plugin.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pixopoint-menu/

There are some bugs still in the software and we don’t recommend using the plugin in a live environment unless you are willing to work around the occasional bug. It doesn’t fully upgrade itself from the Multi-level Navigation plugin, some options are transferred over, some are not. The main thing you will need to change on upgrading to the new plugin are your menu items which are added via a drag and drop interface rather than select boxes in the current plugin.

Note: You don’t need to use the current CSS generator with this plugin. Everything is built into the plugin so that you don’t need to leave your own site to modify your design. The new system allows you to save your designs for editing later too.

You can see it in action on the Dunedin Ice Hockey Association website[/url:c1jm6snt].

[sherryd]

Overall a nice plugin resulting in a sharp looking menu.

Here are a couple of immediate observations:

The include/exclude pages feature is not available at this point.  Care needs to be taken though as when I moved to this new version, it remembered pages excluded in the multi-level plugin.  Deactivating the new one and re-activating the old allowed formerly excluded pages to be re-added.

The second item that appears to be missing is the ability to add pages to the second menu and of course include/exclude. There is only one instance of pages available at this time to drag and drop.  I prefer showing the About and Contact on the sidebar instead of the top menu and I have legal pages such as privacy policy that I definitely do not want showing in the top menu.

The CSS from the Multi-level plugin was pulled into the new one.  A problem I had with the multi-level plugin in IE where the CSS for the last page shown would extend the full length of the menu bar appears to have been resolved.
I’ve not found at this point a way to move the search to the right side of the menu, but I’ve not used the editor at this point either.

I would still like to know how to incorporate the abilities of this plugin into external pages should I go with it.  If that is a paid item, please advise.

SherryD

[sherryd]

http://wbobr.com
Search box doesn’t center correctly in IE6.  Fixed with:
#pixopoint_menu1 li.pixo_search input.pixo_inputsearch {
width:200px;
margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px;
_margin: 0px 5px 0px 0px;
}
#pixopoint_menu1 li.pixo_right {
float:right;
_margin: 6px 0px 0px 0px;
}’);

[sherryd]

Found the include/exclude; with the new dashboard in WordPress some items are hard to see in Firefox, the grey for the arrow down is hardly visible on my system.  Unfortunately, without the exclude in both menus handled separately, it isn’t going to do what is needed. 

The PageMash plugin allows drag and drop for re-ordering pages in the Multi-level Plugin.

Now to figure out how to add a search form to Multi-Level that doesn’t break the CSS.

[imported_Ryan]

Thanks for the input ” title=”Smiley” />

You don’t need to use the PageMash plugin with the new version as that is already included. It’s in the advanced tab.

I’ll take a look at the search box another day when I have the time and I’ll increase the contrast for the arrow so that you can see it better.

Incorporating two separate Pages widgets may be a good idea. I’m not entirely sure how to do that while keeping the drag and drop functionality to rearrange the pages. At the moment you can rearrange the pages themselves via drag and drop but extending that to rearranging two sets of pages may be quite awkward. In the mean time, the best way to get around that would be to use one of the Custom Code boxes to do the second menu.

[Anonymous]

Nice plugin. Page re-ordering works a treat on my WP-Vybe theme with the default page nav. I also added an extra menu using the function and it’s working as expected.

[sherryd]

I did play with the addition of two separate pages widgets, I can get it to show if they both use function pages.  But not if using function pages2.  I renamed them to main menu pages and second menu pages and wanted to separate the call for the include/exclude on suckerfishnav an suckerfishnav_2 as I’d done in the multi-level plugin.  That one worked well.  In order to separate the two pages functions they need different names or they appear as the same one twice.  Right now I’ve succeeded in making a royal mess of the database lol.  Which reminds me, does that uninstall.php work?  I was looking for a place to select it in the admin interface.  I may have to remove it all to get things working properly again.  Needless to say you don’t want to experiment with this on a live blog.

Adding the search in the multi-level plugin, at least for me, adds the search box, but the search isn’t able to find the pages.  Works like at charm in the new PixoPoint Menu.  The search in PixoPoint only needed that small CSS correction for IE6. 

So, at the moment, I can either have the separate include/exclude and no search with the multi-level or no separate include/exclude and a working search with PixoPoint lol.  For the moment I have gone with PixoPoint, but retain the option to switch back if I get the search working in the Multi-level. 

By adding pagemash and my addition for include/exclude Multi-level would have done it all if the search worked lol.

[sherryd]

Resolved issue with search form not finding pages in wordpress (don’t ask how, just fiddled with it).  Resolved CSS for search form.  Muli-level now does all that is needed within the wordpress environment.

[imported_Ryan]

Thanks for the input ” title=”Smiley” />

The uninstall script does work, but there is no direct link to it. If you delete your plugin via the admin panel, the uninstall script will automatically run before the plugin is deleted and strip the data out for you.

[imported_Ryan]

I’ve now released a beta version of this new plugin:
https://geek.hellyer.kiwi/pixopoint-menu/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/pixopoint-menu/

The new version corrects the hover graphic problem reported by Sherryd above.

[Anonymous]

Nice plugin, thanks!

I’m using version 0.5.1 Beta, downloaded today, and I’m having trouble with changing the items displayed on the menu: I can happily drag-and-drop items around, but when I click "Update Options" the items reset to their original positions, and the menu on my site is not updated.  The settings on other pages are working fine.  Firefox 3.0.11 if that helps.

Also, I wrote a very simple additional plugin to add a widget to contain the menu, to avoid than having to hand-edit the theme files.  I’ll attach the plugin php file here, just drop it into the plugins directory, activate it, and the PixoPoint menu will show up in your widgets list, to be selected and moved around etc by the user.  You can also pick it up directly from my svn repository at http://www.mortia.org.uk/svn/webs/alan/ … widget.php if the attachment doesn’t work for any reason.  You might like to add similar code to the main plugin.

[imported_Ryan]

Thanks for the widget ” title=”Smiley” />

I actually have another one of those kicking around somewhere, but I haven’t updated it for ages so it isn’t using the latest widget logic and I don’t think it uses the pixopoint_menu() function, but uses the depreciated suckerfish() function from ages back.

I’ll check out that bug you reported, although I don’t recall that happening last time I tried it.

[imported_Ryan]

Unfortunately I can’t relicate your problem Andy.

Is there anything you can think of which could be causing the problem?

[imported_Ryan]

The reason I haven’t bothered including a widget in the plugin package is that it tends to result in lots of support requests as widget areas are rarely where people want the menu placed. I’ll add a link to your new widget on the plugins page though in case people are keen to use it.

Thanks very much for creating it! I’ll upgrade your account so that you can use all of our premium features for free … actually, I can’t do that until you register. So if you are interested, then register for the forum, then I’ll upgrade your account for you.

[imported_Ryan]

Andy, if you can post a URL to your site I’ll write a blog post up about your new widget with a link back to your site if you like.

[Author]

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