Unsolicited idea: navigating the archives

Paul Escobar · Post by **Paul Escobar** » Wed Dec 14, 2005 9:27 am

Dear PeppermintAfterlife, I wanted to (and did) re-read "The Ass in Assassin" episode the other day, but navigating to the beginning of it proved to be a bit time-consuming. So I have a suggestion: It'd be cool to be able to go directly to the beginning of each episode of The End of Things. Could be done with additional navigation arrows (might prove a bit too clutter-ish) or a clickable list of episode titles somewhere on the index page (And there's probably further ways of arranging such a thing that I can't think of). Anyway, that would be super neat.

TheSuburbanLetdown · Post by **TheSuburbanLetdown** » Wed Dec 14, 2005 10:26 am

That's actually something I've been meaning to do but have a horrible knowledge of coding and a lak of free time (you'll notice there's no update today). I like the way it's done over at pholph.com, and I know fellow spacer Joel Fagin does it the same exact way in a tutorial somewhere. He did say we can steal the coding. But I may just do something as simple as a redirect to the first page of a particular story. Either way, the archives are getting larger and unweildy.

Col · Post by **Col** » Wed Dec 14, 2005 1:25 pm

I second this idea, and say it is a good one.

Paul Escobar · Post by **Paul Escobar** » Fri Mar 17, 2006 1:10 pm

I'm unashamedly bumping this thread, because I came across some HTML code that produces a drop-down menu which can be used to navigate a site, and thought it might be of interest.

If I got it right, you just have to insert the code at the foot of this post on the End of Things main page wherever it fits, layout-wise. (I wasn't sure of the proper chapter titles, so I just put down something... Anyway, you just stick in the appropriate URLs and titles.)

The drop-down thingie works out alright; I tested it in Dreamweaver. The only thing I'm not quite sure will work is the cgi-bin/redirect code - and I have no possibility to test that. But if you care to, you can try out this code. The worst thing that can happen is that the menu redirects to "archive not found", and if that's the case, I'm a dumbass who's overlooked something obvious, and you can just delete the darn thing again, no harm done.

Here's the code:

<FORM
ACTION="../cgi-bin/redirect.pl"
METHOD=POST onSubmit="return dropdown(this.gourl)">
<SELECT NAME="gourl">
<OPTION VALUE="">Choose a destination...
<OPTION VALUE="http://endofthings.comicgen.com/d/20040419.html">The Smiling Bastard
<OPTION VALUE="http://endofthings.comicgen.com/d/20040 ... Homecoming Ticket
<OPTION VALUE="http://endofthings.comicgen.com/d/20040614.html">Self Portrait
<OPTION VALUE="http://endofthings.comicgen.com/d/20040616.html">Career Center
<OPTION VALUE="http://endofthings.comicgen.com/d/20040621.html">That Dream
<OPTION VALUE="http://endofthings.comicgen.com/d/20040625.html">The Soap Incident
</SELECT>
<INPUT TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="Go">
</FORM>

EDIT: OK, I'm a dumbass who overlooked something obvious. To get the ACTION= bit to work, it requires some additional coding... which I don't know what should be. As it is, you'll just end up with "archive not found". Oops.

Er... It's all Macromedia's fault! Using Dreamweaver tricked me into believing I actually knew HTML!

TheSuburbanLetdown · Post by **TheSuburbanLetdown** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 9:35 am

Thanks. I'll have to give this a try soon, as the archive keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Paul Escobar · Post by **Paul Escobar** » Tue Mar 21, 2006 10:57 am

You're welcome, but you need someone smarter than me to figure out the ACTION= part. I guess Joel Fagin would know?