I’ve had a fair amount of feedback since my initial post which contained the news that MenuMachine is to become a Mac-only application. Windows users are unhappy with our decision which is perfectly understandable, whereas Mac users have been overwhelmingly positive with their reactions, which is great.
I thought I’d explain a little more about what the new version of MenuMachine will do and what technologies we’ll be implementing, since that’s what many of you have asked about. In this article I’ll call the new version MenuMachine 3, but as yet we haven’t decided on the final name.
When we first designed MenuMachine 2, one of the primary design goals was to make it as easy as possible for users to manage updates to the menus across the entire site. In order to do this, we implemented MenuMachine 2 to use a single menu definition, stored once for the whole site. This menu definition was then interpreted by the browser when a page containing a menu was loaded and the relative links were calculated to be correct for the current page. For the most part this works well — if the browser has JavaScript enabled. We looked at several ways to incorporate accessible content into the page as well as the JavaScript-generated links and eventually settled on a simple link to a menu map page, with the option to customise the code.
Many users really loved the simplicity of updating a web site’s menus that this technique provided, but it obviously was not ideal from an accessibility or SEO standpoint. Several things have changed in the web landscape in the last few years, and overwhelmingly the recommended way of creating navigation these days is to use a simple unordered list incorporating <ul> and <li> tags to form the menu structure, with the menu’s appearance created using CSS. This results in a very fast loading menu as the menu code does not have to be created on-the fly using JavaScript as the page loads.
MenuMachine 3 will use HTML list syntax styled with CSS for all the menu types it creates. If JavaScript is enabled, the menus will be enhanced but they will work even if JavaScript is disabled. This is the best outcome for accessibility and search engine optimisation. Obviously, it makes it a bit more tricky as far as site-wide updating goes as the code is hard-wired into each page that contains a menu, however if you use Dreamweaver this will be handled automatically thanks to some magic in our Dreamweaver plugin. For those who would still like the MenuMachine 2 site-wide updating behaviour, we will support this by using AJAX techniques to allow the menu to be injected into the page on the fly.
The other big advance in the last few years is with JavaScript frameworks. Basically, these are blocks of JavaScript code that are used as building blocks to make creating cross-platform JavaScript code faster and much more robust. There are several of these libraries available as open source and they are used by many, many developers. I spent a huge amount of time with MenuMachine 2 tracking down obscure bugs in various browsers to create a cross-browser JavaScript library to support the menus. A large proportion of our support issues, especially in the early days of MenuMachine 2, were all related to problems in the browser support code, largely due to its complexity and the vast array of browser differences and bugs. These days, MenuMachine 2 code is very stable in a wide range of browsers (thanks to a lot of hard slog) but now that people are using some of the more complex JavaScript frameworks in their sites we are having a few compatibility issues that we could not have anticipated.
What we’ve decided with MenuMachine 3 is to use one of these standard open-source frameworks ourselves. This means that you can be assured that the foundation code for your menus will have been battle tested by thousands of developers and will work in a wide variety of browsers. The library we are basing the MenuMachine 3 browser code on is a modified version of jQuery. We are using a customised, stripped-back version of this library that allows us to reduce the footprint for MenuMachine 3 so that it is significantly smaller than the MenuMachine 2 support library while also being faster and more stable. One of the great advantages of jQuery is that it does not conflict with other JavaScript code in the page, including other complex frameworks like prototype, dojo or mootools. Those of you that have had problems using MenuMachine with Lightbox and similar effects will greatly benefit from this.
Most importantly, switching to a robust open-source base for our browser code will free up the time that we would otherwise be spending debugging obscure cross-browser issues so that we can spend more time adding exciting functionality to MenuMachine. We have already been able to expand the number of menu types that can be created with MenuMachine 3 by using this framework and thanks to the plug-in nature of MenuMachine 3, we can easily add new menu types in future.
From the user’s point of view, all of this will be essentially invisible. MenuMachine will handle all the code creation and link management behind the scenes so you can just get on with creating beautiful, functional navigation systems for your web sites, secure in the knowledge that the code will be fast and compatible with a wide variety of browsers.
Update: Check out this link which discusses JavaScript frameworks and basically reinforces our decision to use one.
August 18th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Great to see this dev-blog and read about what you’re up to. I am really looking forward to test this new MM3 out, and while I wait for a release I’ll try to get a grip on DW to be able to… well… do things when everything is out.
August 18th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
I am very disappoingted that you are only going to support the Mac. Whilst your userbase may have been 70% Mac, was that not because it was GoLive? Surely with a Dreamweaver user base you would have the reverse. Please consider this.
I have looked at all the menu generation software applications for Dreamweaver and they are either poor or very restrictive i.e. no better than setting up the Accordions yourself.
Any chance of a rethink?
August 18th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
@Barbara:
At present we have no plans to produce a Windows version. While the overall Dreamweaver market may be skewed in favor of Windows users, we expect to retain a substantial proportion of Mac users. We can also support editors other than Dreamweaver, which spreads our user base into areas we have not been able to address before.
I am sorry we are letting down our Windows users, but unfortunately Adobe left us with little choice. We chose the path that will hopefully work out best for the majority.
August 26th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
BARBARA, GoLive was for Windows as well. A wider Windows DW user base does not necessarily mean a talented or successful user base. If your professional enough you should be able to provide multi platform capabilities. Stop wining.
August 28th, 2008 at 4:48 am
Thanks Rob for putting up the blog… Nice to be able to keep up with what’s happenin’ with MM3. I, as well as others I see, are learning DW. Waiting for it all to come together. I’m excited, can’t wait.
Thanks, Ron
August 29th, 2008 at 5:03 pm
Very sad to hear that you leave us Windows users. I’m going to miss Menumachine.
September 6th, 2008 at 6:29 am
Well, I was planning to go back to Mac in the mid-term future, one year at most. This move just makes my decision easier, and perhaps even sooner. Anyway, it’s a pity, not only for your windows’ user base, but also for you, since 30% is hardly something to be abandoned easily.
Might there be a possibility that if business goes well in this new MM’s incarnation you might port your product to Windows users too in the not-so-distant future?
BTW, does anyone know if some company is going to keep developing and supporting GoLive? Its interace and ease of use beats down DW by a mile, to say the least.
September 7th, 2008 at 8:47 pm
I´m very happy about your decision to build this blog.
As I try to get a grip on DW since 3 Years, I always went back to Golive and now I´m working with Golive 8 again as Golive 9 is not usable due to the auto CSS.
Your decision for a stand alone app. for OSX is perfect! so I´m maybe able to switch one day (when OSX will no longer support PPC-Apps like Golive 8 ) to another Main-Website-Organising tool. DW is horrible and “ages” behind Golive in “Usability” (example: “undo css-changes”) and “sitemanagement”.
BTW: Is there a chance that you will build a good sitemanagement- and css-tool? You have the talent and the “usability-feeling” for it – just an idea…
Very best regards from a very happy “long-year” customer in Germany!
Akigolf
September 11th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Curious: do you have an expected release date for MM3? I’m a big fan of MM2, but wasn’t crazy about GoLive. It’ll be nice to be working back in DW again…
September 11th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I’m going to put my pitch in now for the first text editor with integration to be BBEdit. It’s pretty much all I use and having MenuMachine available to me in BBEdit would be a dream come true. Also, kudos on the move to unordered lists and CSS; it’s a beautiful world out there with code like that.
As many others have said, happy to beta test when it’s ready. I’ll have to keep checking back to see when that might be.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
@macmec:
We haven’t yet decided which other editors to target initially, but BBEdit and TextMate are the most likely as plugin development is relatively straightforward.
@Anthony P:
We haven’t made any announcements about a release date as yet. I will post that information here first, but it’s a little way off at this point.
September 14th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Great to see this blog Rob! I am SO happy to see that MM3 development will be continuing following the murder of GoLive by Adobe. I’m still using GL CS2 with MM2 and will continue to do so until MM3 becomes a reality. Even still I will go kicking and screaming into Dreamweaver. My fervent hope is that Adobe will have drastically improved Dreamweaver in the new CS4 version to be announced September 23rd. I’m hoping that some of the GL interface will be ported into DW to increase its ease of use, and to bring the UI more into line with the rest of the Creative Suite, and a bit more GoLive-ish.
One question: Will MM3 be a plug-in for DW, or a standalone application that is intended to work in tandem with any web development app?
Please feel free to contact me about testing when it’s ready to go. I’ve been a loyal user since MM was first announced, and would love to support its continued development. Your brilliance in the conception and programming of this little gem has saved my life, and the life of many sites, many many times over the last few years.
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:34 pm
It’s very disappointing that there will be no version of MM3 for DW/Windows.
But all who own anyway GL8 or GL9 and MM2 can use this combination as a wonderful but external tool for producing menues. OK, it is not so comfortable like to use it directly in DW, but it works.
What disturb a littlebit is that you cannot see the menue in DW. Or is there any possibility to make the MM-menues visible in the layout-mode of DW?
September 23rd, 2008 at 12:18 am
@frank:
Unfortunately it won’t ever be possible to preview MenuMachine 2 menus in Dreamweaver, since Dreamweaver lacks the ability to do custom drawing in the Design view.
That will not be the case for MenuMachine 3 which will be able to display menu previews in Dreamweaver.
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:40 am
Awesome to be able to read where MM3 will be going and I totally agree with you on the technical aspects of the new build. This will be great!
I will make the jump from GL2 to DW4 in September when it comes out. I hope to be able to get MM3 with it! Any chance we can hear about timeframes? Thanks and keep up the great work!
October 1st, 2008 at 2:50 pm
Just as Adobe slammed the door on you, so you have slammed the door on all Windows platform users – 30% of your customers according to your figures – including many corporate and industrial-strength websites.
And you have entered the idiotic world of platform-specificity instead of choosing a development platform which makes your software accessible to others.
A strange way to run a business, but I guess we will be elsewhere from now on anyway.
October 1st, 2008 at 4:12 pm
@Disappointed:
Unfortunately there are simply no cross-platform toolkits available that would allows us to build an app that we would be happy with. Those that are available all have major compromises.
As I’ve explained in a reasonable amount of detail on the blog here, we are a small company and we had to make a difficult technical decision. Our only other choice would have been to drop MenuMachine development altogether.
I am very sorry that we have had to exclude a large chunk of our users, it is most definitely not what we wanted to do.
October 8th, 2008 at 7:57 am
Blog updates seem to have stopped. What is the current status of MM3?
As one who uses mainly a Mac, but also Windows (when necessary), I can empathize with the distress of those complaining of this program going Mac only. The same feeling I get when confronted with the myriad of Windows only programs. The usual response if the developer is queried on any possible Mac version is to get a PC. As a result, I also have a PC. I think you can see where this is going…
October 9th, 2008 at 6:52 am
Looking forward to an update on time line also. Any hints?
January 23rd, 2009 at 12:39 am
Will it be possible to keep existing menues from MM2 and use them with MM3?
January 23rd, 2009 at 4:23 pm
@Meggi:
You will be able to import MenuMachine 2 menus into the new version, however you will probably need to fine tune the appearance once the menu is imported, it will not look exactly the same. The menu structure and links will be retained, which is usually the most time-consuming part of building the menu.
January 25th, 2009 at 12:40 am
I’m looking forward to see MM3 for DW. Sorry or PC users here. But you know what, there are tons of PC only apps out there, and then there are some Mac only apps for us. So be it
PC users still have plenty choices of apps to work with.
And if you do web design, please get a MAC for your own good.
January 25th, 2009 at 3:18 am
Hey, Rob…….
Okay, I qualify: I’m on a Mac (since 1992 ) I’ve Lindadotcommed myself for a year now on DW CS3 and CSS; I still feel like a newbie and I HATE CSS and the W3C — in that order. However, I love you and Janet and MM…..so I’m standing on one foot then the other waiting on V3…..any idea as to an ETA…
January 31st, 2009 at 1:17 am
I have been using Golive since it was first out. When Adobe switched to DW I bought a Mac, dumped the PC and started learning DW. Is taking awhile. BUT, I miss my MM. I keep on updating old sites using Windows GoLive because of the MM but cannot wait for the new MM so all my sites can migrate from Windows Golive to DW.
Cape Town, South Africa
February 26th, 2009 at 5:17 am
when oh when? i am not switching to dw till mm is available