I started coding for jqol – thoughts from last week. But I ran into some dilemma.
A very important UI of an eshop is the menu. However, I do not have a mature jQuery UI menu (jQuery menu) widget to use. jQuery menu widget is only available from jQuery UI 1.9, which is still in a stage of milestone 3. The most recent jQuery menu can only theme a flat menu. It can not theme nested (or so called hierarchy) menu. In short, it is useless.
Luckily, Filament Group contributed a very sophisticated jQuery menu UI plugin (fg menu). It can theme flat or hierarchy menu into different styles – flat, flyout, ipod. However, when I try to use it, I find fg menu is based on a different concept to jQuery menu. Fg menu is simulating an OS start menu, and the object being menued is the start button, i.e. use the following code to initialise a menu.
jQuery("button").menu({options}); //menu content inside options
While jQuery menu is exactly a Magento menu, i.e. use the following code to initialise a menu.
jQuery("#nav").menu({options}); //jQuery("#nav").html() itself is the menu content
I am more comfortable taking jQuery core team’s logic, specially in the case of converting Magento menu to jQuery menu widget. Someone from jQuery team has clarified they are of different structures. The status quo is Magento core team’s menu is not completed, but fg menu is something I can use now. So my decision is –
Stay with fg menu for now, and change my code when jQuery menu is mature with all the options I want.