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HM5 Status Report: Adding Opera

D.M Ragle, March 12, 2003

Welcome to our first installment of HM_InProgress, a new area of HierMenusCentral.com. Here, we intend to post information that pertains to the ongoing development of HierMenus; from status updates, to maintenance releases, to brief tips and tutorials focused on making the best use of HierMenus on your site.

First, let's address the most popular question we've been getting on HierMenus of late. Specifically: "When will we see the next version of HierMenus?" While a target date for HM5 hasn't been set in stone, I can report that our HM5 development efforts are proceeding in earnest. HM5 will provide two of our most oft-requested features: cross-frames compatibility (where you can create HTML links in one frame that, when clicked or rolled over, pop-up your navigation menus in a second frame), and support for the latest Opera browser, Opera 7. We're impressed with Opera 7, and especially pleased to report that it now sports all (well, ok, most... we'll get to that in a minute) of the crucial functions we need to support it in HM.

Before continuing with this update, let's address another critical HM issue, that being the time it's taken to provide this update and new HM releases in general. You may have already noticed that this article is not being written by HierMenus creator and developer, Peter Belesis. Regrettably, Peter's work on his other projects has been absorbing him, leaving him hardly free to eat and sleep--let alone continue to crank out the top-quality updates and informative articles that he has for the past 5 years (that's right: the first version of HM appeared over 5 years ago!). I'm therefore chipping in on the ongoing HierMenus development. While I've clearly got a lot of catching up to do (5 years?!? Yikes!), I hope to provide the kind of continuous updates and informative articles that both HM fans and DTHML developers have come to expect from our little corner of the Web. (Not to mention providing Peter with a long and well deserved rest from his tremendous efforts.)

To get started, let's have a look at the latest release from the Opera camp, and see what it takes to add support for Opera in HM. While the remainder of this article focuses primarily on techniques and issues specifically relating to the development of HierMenus for Opera 7, the information presented can be appreciated by--and may be useful to--all DHTML developers.

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