Menubars, etc.

Some of you might have noticed a change in the menubars. Sorry for any trouble it caused. The broken links were just plain sloppy of me. One of those things that seemed so simple, I didn't even bother to check them all. *slapping self*

I also assumed that most people, when they woke up in the morning and logged in, their browser would actually pull up the latest changes to the CSS pages. Alas, it seems that many browsers continued to used cached versions. If the menubar at the bottoms of the pages looks incorrect, try clicking the refresh button on your browser a couple of times. That should fix it for most people.

I have tested the menu bars on IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari browsers, so it should work on all of those unless, perhaps, you're using a really old version of one of those browser. If it breaks on cell phones, PDAs, and other handheld devices--in my defense, I've never officially supported those types of devices, and never claimed I would. If you are able to surf AQ on such devices, that's a nice bonus. I do try to keep the HTML and CSS relatively simple to improve the chances that AQ will continue to work on such devices, but I make no promises about how usable or not they are, and different handheld devices will have different capabilities. Some may work, some may not.

Please do not ask me to fix AQ if you use a browser I do not officially support. I have no way to test on such browsers. The ones listed above are the ones I have ready access to and are the ones that about 99% of members on Atlas Quest use. If there is a problem with an officially supported browser, please do let me know so I can investigate the matter.

If you do not like the expanded bottom menu, you can set your theme to http://www.atlasquest.com/css/nodropdowns.css to get rid of the submenus.

You'll also notice that I removed a few links from the menubar. Since I created Atlas Quest, the menu bars have been a one size fits all deal. I added links that really weren't critical because I thought a significant number of people might find them useful. As the number of members on Atlas Quest grows, however, the one size fits all style of handling things becomes increasingly less ideal.

So starting today, you can add your own menubar links. Create links to your Gmail account, or to LbNA. Create links for newly listed boxes or some of your favorite searches. Make links to anywhere that suits your needs. You won't be able to change or delete the default menu options, but you can add as many new menu items to any of the submenus of your choice.

If you want to recreate some of the default links I took out, the links are:

What's New?: http://www.atlasquest.com/results.html?gTypeId=6;gTimespan=week;gStatus=0;gCountryId=0;gSort=2
My Tags: http://www.atlasquest.com/results.html?gTypeId=17;gSort=1;gStatus=0;gTags=255
My Watches: http://www.atlasquest.com/results.html?gTypeId=17;gSort=1;gStatus=512

I had taken the My Contacts link out, figuring to let those who make use of the feature regularly add it as a personal option, but decided to reconsider and added it back as a default. You won't need to add it yourself if you want that link after all. =)

I've never heard of a website that allows you to add your own menubar choices. Nobody ever asked me for such an option either. But the theory behind it is a lot like the new My Page improvements. It let's you customize your experience on Atlas Quest to a degree that I've never seen another website allow. (I'm not claiming that AQ actually is the first website to do this--just that it's the first one I know about to allow this.) So load up that menubar with all your favorite links, and I hope you enjoy the changes! =)