Jeegoocontext, a jQuery context menu plugin
Jeegoocontext is a jQuery plugin that allows for multiple custom context menus (pop-up menus) to exist on a single page. The plugin is able to transform any unordered list appended to the body into a multi-level, intelligently positioned styled context menu via a single call.
Features:
Easy to implement
Steps required to implement the plugin:
- Include references to the jquery library, and to jquery.jeegoocontext.min.js.
- Select a skin (skins cm_default and cm_blue included in the code-download) and include a reference to the skin's stylesheet.
- Append an unordered list to the body and give it a unique id and the following class name: "jeegoocontext" and the class name for the skin: "cm_default" or "cm_blue" for example.
- Bind any context to the menu with the following call: $('context').jeegoocontext('menu id'); Where 'context' can be any jQuery selector and 'menu id' contains the unique id of the menu, for example: $('.context').jeegoocontext('menu_1');
Both vertical and horizontal intelligent positioning
Normally the context menu opens exactly at the clicked position. However, when opened at the near edges of a webpage, the menu and subsequent submenus are offset to the left/top to avoid overflow to the right/bottom.
Overflow behavior can be customized by adjusting the widthOverflowOffset and heightOverflowOffset properties on the options object.
Customizable time delays to provide easy selection of items
The delay property on the options object provides time-out values to the menu to allow for easy selection of submenu items. Without these delays expanded submenus collapse immediately after a user moves his/her mouse to another list-item, which can be very annoying. The following animations illustrate these conditions:
No delays
Delays
Multiple context menus on a single page
Each page can contain multiple context menus. All that is required is that each menu contains a unique id and they all share the "jeegoocontext" class (overridable via the options.menuClass property).
Fully css customizable UI
The plugin contains very little presentation script, so the UI can be fully styled via css. The code-download includes a skins folder containing two skins named: "cm_default" and "cm_blue". These skins consist of nothing more than an images folder and a stylesheet.
Customizable behavior via callbacks
The plugin publishes the following four useful events to provide customizable behavior:
- onShow
- onHover
- onSelect
- onHide
From within each of these callbacks default behavior can be cancelled by returning false.
Customizable class names to avoid potential naming conflicts
The plugin uses the following class names:
- active
- hover
- jeegoocontext
- submenu
- separator
All class names are overridable to avoid potential naming conflicts.
Opera compatible
Opera doesn't allow right-click event overrides. When the plugin detects Opera it automatically binds the menu to the doubleclick event. The event-type can be overriden via the operaEvent property on the options object.
Cross-browser support
The plugin was tested in the following browsers: Opera 10, Safari 4, Chrome 3, Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6, 7 & 8. Although compatible with all these browsers, it is not recommended to use the styled skin in IE 6 due to some (possible) weird caching bug. For some reasen IE 6 decides to re-download all images used in the menu on every mouseover.
Keyboard support
The escape key closes the menu. The enter key selects a menu-item. The arrow keys can be used to move between different menu-items and submenus. Both the up and down arrow keys can be hold down to loop through the menu-items.
Lightweight
The minified version of the script is just under 6 kb in size.
Unobtrusive
No changes to the page html are required except for appending the context menu to the body.
Suggestions? We would like to hear about your experiences with the JeeGoo context menu.
E-mail is not required
Hey pako, thanks for the info. I hadn't considered dynamically added elements when designing the menu. There should obviously be a check if submenu arrows are already present before adding them. I will fix these issues in the next release.
Every time this happens Jeegoo Context adds another arrow next to each element with a submenu.
I have a single context menu and try adding it to every new element the user adds to the document. I call the following method: $('#element_'+el.id).jeegoocontext('contextmenu');
Jeegoo Context doesn't property support adding the same multi-level context menu to dynamically generated elements being added to the document on-the-fly.
This line in the style.css for the cm_default theme needs fixing:
/* Possibly inherited values overrides */
border-width:0; float:none; background-color:#d7e1eb; background:#e6e6e6 url(images/contextmenu_bg.gif) repeat-y 0 0;
I just removed the reference to the contextmenu_bg.gif file in my version.
Hey Joe, the latest release (version 1.1.1) exposes an event property on the options object which can be used to bind
the menu to a different event. For example, the menu can be bound to a left-click like this: $('.context').jeegoocontext('menu', { event: 'click' });
Hey. This looks good. How hard would it be to have it be a pop-up menu rather than context? (In other words, to use the left-click...)
Should be an easy change?
Cool. I had the context menu up and running in a couple of minutes. Good work.