Problem with navigation submenu in Windows browsers

I’m seeing a problem in navigation menu behavior when a submenu is present. The problem has been reported in Windows but doesn’t appear to be a problem on Mac. The problem has been reported in the following setups, after clearing the browser cache:

Omeka: v2.4.1 and v2.5
Themes: Seasons and Thanks Roy
Firefox 52 on Windows 10
Chrome 57 on Windows 10

Problem:
If a menu item has a submenu and a user clicks on the parent menu item, the parent menu item link does not work (the user is not taken to the parent menu item’s page). The user remains on the page where they clicked. The only visible action is that the drop-down menu icon changes from a downward pointing arrow to an arrow pointing to the right.

However if a user hovers on a parent menu item, then the item’s submenu displays correctly. And clicking on the submenu items works as expected.

Has anyone else seen this behavior?
I’m not sure if this is a bug or if there is something we can do on our end.

1 Like

Do you know what versions of the themes? (it’s listed on the system info page, linked in the footer on the admin side)

Looks like both Berlin and Seasons are version 2.3.1

Also reported in Omeka 2.3.1 with Berlin 2.3 and Seasons 2.3

Try updating the themes - Berlin, Seasons, and Thanks Roy are all now at 2.4

I will upgrade, as you suggest.

But I looked at the commits since Seasons 2.3.1 (for example) was released (https://github.com/omeka/theme-seasons/compare/v2.3.1...master), and I’m not seeing any updates that would resolve the navigation submenu problem.

I updated the themes, and unfortunately the update did not resolve the problem. Parent navigation menu items (with a submenu) still don’t work in Windows 10 Chrome and Firefox.

Here is a fresh install of 2.5 that shows the problem:
http://anneliesedehner.com/omeka2-5/

We’ve been unable to reproduce the issue on machines running Windows 10, either in Firefox or Chrome. Clicking on the top-level nav element (browse items) takes us to the /items/browse page with no errors.

Hi-- We are the ones that are having the problems. It is happening on every computer in our office (5). They work properly if we use Bing, but not the others. I’m not sure when it started happening, but it used to work and we haven’t changed anything about browsers or settings.

We have touch screen computers-- that seems to be the difference. Our one non-touch screen is working fine.

Aah, the touch functionality makes sense, as touch-enabled devices have trouble with hover-based interactions. Thank you, that’s a helpful lead for this issue.

The problem lies with the jQuery plugin we use to manage most of our themes’ navigation, the Adobe Accessibility Megamenu. Their script targets touch events in a way that prevents clickthrough on parent navigation items. We’re updating this script with our own fix in a future point release of Omeka.

In the meantime if you’d like to test this fix, make a backup copy of “application/views/scripts/javascripts/vendor/jquery-accessibleMegaMenu.js” in your Omeka installation. Then open and replace it with the contents of this version. If this does or doesn’t work for you, we’d appreciate your feedback.

Thank you Kim.

I added your fix, and it resolved the problem on the touch windows laptop in my office. But @CathyHajo is still experiencing the problem on her touch screen computers.

A couple things to check:

  • Make sure things are refreshed, caches cleared, etc. It could be a simple case of the browser still using the previous cached copy of the file.
  • Alternatively, if somebody’s actually using touch to navigate on the site, the fix works like this: the first touch opens the submenu, and a second click/touch on the top link follows the link.

Thanks for responses! Worked greatly.

As an FYI, this fix (introduced in v2.5.1) to add a listener for a DOMAttrModified event is now causing this warning in the Firexox console: “Use of Mutation Events is deprecated. Use MutationObserver instead.”

To see this happen, open this Omeka sample site and mouse over the Notes menu item:
https://www.assyntplacenames.net/

The warning occurs Firefox, but not in Chrome.