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A project I’m working on has a multi-level menu system. The one we’re currently using is a hacked up version of something old school that requires heavy JavaScript code to do browser detects, redraws and more. No I’m serious…it’s 442 lines of code in an ultimately powerful JavaScript file that’s just shy of 2300 lines…and most of it has been optimized and minified. So I went on my search to find another solution. Something more CSS based that our wonderful search engines will pickup on a little more effectively. I came across the Suckerfish Menu from A List Apart. Most of their stuff is really solid, and this tutorial doesn’t fall short of expectations. That being said after a little more fun with Google I came across Son of Suckerfish Dropdowns and immediately became intrigued. Both examples utilize a small chunk of JavaScript code (12-17 lines) a far cry from the 442 lines. For some reason it seems that the Son of Suckerfish Dropdowns works better, faster and is easier to implement. So I’m going to run through it and tweak it to my liking and specific needs.

It does post a question to ponder though…is there anything better, and if it doesn’t suck so much, why call it Suckerfish?

EDIT: Moments after posting this I suddenly realized that I’m also using jQuery already, so maybe there’s an easier way! I hit a quick Google search and sure enough there’s a jQuery Suckerfish Menu. Poking around a little more though and there’s a Superfish Menu – Suckerfish on ‘roids apparently. Maybe I’ll have to try them both. Any other suggestions?

So the quest has begun to find a new calendar/date picker to use on a site with two input fields (a depart & a return). It also needs to be able to restrict dates based on values from other select boxes and ideally display multiple months at a time either horizontally or vertically. And of course there’s a restriction on the begin and end dates in the calendar too. The site already has jQuery running in the background so it just makes sense to go with that library to power the picker.

A quick Google search shows a promising list. I’ve had an in-depth look at three of them:

• Date Picker plugin
• jQuery Datepicker
• jQuery UI – Datepicker

Now each has it’s strong points but it doesn’t seem to offer everything I need. So I pose the question to you, do you have any clue on a great calendar/date picker running on the jQuery library?

Thanks in advance.