Ron Lipke

Ron,

> Is there anyway to get rid of the +/- item at the beginning of every
> expandable item so that the first character of every line is the bullet
> or sequence in the list?

assuming you are _not_ using CSS to set the ordered list style type, you
should be able to set the extra HTML to a blank string, and use this:

<li>1. <a>name of person</a>

The script will use everything upto the <a> element. Note that you may need
to restyle it to stop getting double lines, since there will now be two <a>
elements in each LI.

If you are using CSS to set the list style type ('a', 'A', 'iii', '3', etc),
then what you want to do is not possible.


Mark 'Tarquin' Wilton-Jones - author of http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/

Ron,

> By placing the content in <a> tags, the only change is the removal of the
> link line, so the only clickable item is the List sequence number (I am
> using unordered lists and numbering them manually).

Ok, then I think I may have missed your point.

Basically, the blank string removes the +/- sign. The <a> can be used _if_
you want to, to make the script not use the enclosed text as its expand link
(it will only use whatever appears before it).

If you want to make the person's name _and_ the number into the expand link,
just use the blank string when calling the collapsing function.

If you want to make the number but not the name into the expand link, then
do what I said in the last mail.

If you want to make the name but not the number into the expand link, then
use the blank string when calling the collapse function, and use CSS to set
the numbers.

Ron,

> What do you mean by "a blank string".  No matter how I code each list
> item, if it has a nested list, it shows up with the +/- character at the
> beginning of the line.

When you tell the script to collapse the list, you will probably be using
something like this:
compactMenu('someID',false,'± ');
change that to:
compactMenu('someID',false,'');

± is the HTML entity that creates the +/- character.

Ron,

> Another question if you don't mind.  Is there a way to use one command to
> expand and collapse the entire list.

Not yet, but it is fairly easy to write;

function makeAllLists(oList,oShow) {
  if( !document.getElementById ) { return; }
  var oLsts = document.getElementById(oList);
  oLsts = oLsts.getElementsByTagName(oLsts.tagName);
  for( var i = 0; i < oLsts.length; i++ ) {
    oLsts[i].style.display = oShow ? 'block' : 'none';
  }
}

Then call it like this to collapse:
makeAllLists('someID',false);
And like this to expand:
makeAllLists('someID',true);

Note that this cannot be combined with the shouldAutoCollapse feature.