Drop-down Menu Builders

[Tami]

Drop-down Menu Builders
Dan Wellman

Dan Wellman evaluates free and commercial software that can help you create menus that expand into sub-menus and are used as a means of navigating your site. He looks at browser-based and GUI-based formats and makes some recommendations.
On the Internet today there are many programs tailored specifically toward creating smoothly animated pull-down menu navigation bars. Whenever a need for such software develops, application builders are always keen to exploit the new-found niche. The use of javascript as an animation and interaction medium is now so widespread that programs devoted to making its use easier are now abundantly available. Aimed not just at those that do not have the time, means or inclination to learn javascript, but also at the developer that wants to shorten their development cycle or increase their productivity, these programs really can make a difference.

Hardcore coders may take the view that using such software to do the bulk of the work for you is cheating. Unless you\'re a robot however, you\'ll probably not be able to recall every single javascript method and property, and will turn repeatedly to the reference book for anything reasonably complex.

But sometimes, javascript feels like one of those languages that can be classed almost as an extension of HTML rather than a fully-fledged independent language in its own right, a bolt-on language you might say, and there are different levels of knowledge. The fact that you know that javascript exists at all is almost enough to be able to use it effectively. A useful analogy is to think of it in the same way as a car mechanic; a skilled mechanic wouldn\'t necessarily know how to make every single engine component from scratch, but he would know how to put them together to make them work. Think of using javascript in the same way.

At the moment the height of fashion, as far as web design goes, are sexy, animated, colorful menus that expand into sub-menus and are used as a means of navigating your site. They come in every color, style and size imaginable, and every site worth its salt makes use of them. The only draw back is that even the simpler ones are tricky and time consuming to code. Enter the javascript Menu creation software; a dedicated, fully functional program designed solely for creating custom expandable menus quickly and easily.

Why would you want to do this? Adding this kind of feature to a website will not only make it aesthetically pleasing, it will make it interactive. This is a distinct need for any site competing for hits. If people not only enjoy visiting your site, but actually remember that it exists, there\'s more chance of them coming back.

The only problem is, which of the many variants on this theme do you choose? You may be the sort of person that likes to do your own research, spending hours searching for, downloading, and testing programs until you find one that meets your individual needs. If so, go right ahead, believe me, there are enough of these programs out there to keep you going for some time. If you\'d rather get down to some serious web design without wasting time however, read on.

Evaluate Your Needs

First you need to evaluate your needs and categorize yourself; are you a home user who just wants to add a bit of sparkle to your personal homepage, an enthusiast that wants to make a bold statement without breaking the bank, or the web professional with a corporate presence to keep on the cutting edge of design?

The real reason for doing this is to decide how much money you want to spend. It makes sense if you only have one website that you\'d like to place a visually-enhanced menu navigation system on to do it for free, but a web master would find it a long and painful process using a small freeware application to implement a similar navigation system across multiple sites.

Two Formats of javascript Menu Creating Software

There are two main formats that javascript menu creating software comes in -- browser based and GUI based. The browser based variety are extremely quick and easy to use, and very intuitive. The full-on applications that you can use are more powerful and customizable, but this increases their complexity and therefore may take longer to master.

Beginning then with the home user who has one small site to add interactivity to, the obvious choice is a freeware application. Strangely enough though, there are relatively few fully freeware applications available that are specifically designed for creating javascript menus, and those that are around are pretty basic in both interface and output. Nevertheless, an excellent resource for simple solutions is EZMenu 3.0 from www.web-nova.com which is available completely free of charge provided the menu is used on non-commercial sites only, and the link-back to web-nova remains intact. This is pretty good considering that even the programs that charge you a small to medium fee usually restrict the menu usage to a maximum of five separate websites.

The program is browser based, and very well documented; there are numerous help files including a step-by-step guide to using the software and the menu, and a host of examples to inspire you or help you troubleshoot. It is very easy to use and after playing around with it for just five minutes I had a web page with a basic two-dimensional navigation menu linking to other pages on it. What could be easier? My initial test menu fell far short of the limit of the capabilities that this program can offer you.

It is beautifully laid out and lets you customize everything from the color of the menu heading, the color of the first and second level links, the text size, font and color and mouse-over events, all without knowing a single line of javascript (I do, of course, but even if I didn\'t, I wouldn\'t need to in order to successfully use this program.) It even allows you to set transitional effects to the menu, including fade and dissolve. Transitional effects are what happen to the sub-menus once the mouse pointer has moved off of them.

All in all, this is a surprisingly powerful and effective menu maker considering it is free, and has unlimited use status. The menu also promises to be compatible with all major modern browsers. If you want a javascript menu without paying a penny, it absolutely must be EZMenu.

The next rung of the ladder is the semi-professional software aimed at the web enthusiast who doesn\'t mind paying a small price for a cool site, or the small business owner that needs to keep overhead down and hit counts up. Software of this type is priced typically between $25 and $50 and again comes in either browser based or GUI based formats.

Priced at just $35 for a single PC/unlimited site license, the excellent Sothink DHTML Menu 4.4 is a strong contender for title of \'Best javascript Menu Creating Software\' in the middle group. It\'s a full application with a very well laid out graphical user interface that has a strong \'XP\' look and feel to it. In addition to the main program window, there are several floating panels which give easy access to the properties and settings of your current project, a very advanced feature in such a reasonably priced product. There is also a live preview pane in the main program window to give you a constant view of how your menu is shaping up.

I am amazed at how intuitive this program is; with literally a few clicks you can have a fully functioning animated menu up and running. Whilst creating your menu, setting the options for the menu is extremely easy; you have full access to everything from font sizes and colors through to mouse-overs and menu item names using the Menu Item floating panel. This panel also includes the styles picker which allows you to base your menu on one of around 80 templates.

When you\'re happy with the look and feel of your menu, publishing it couldn\'t have been made easier than with the publishing wizard, which gives you complete control over how you use the script behind the menu.

In addition to its already impressive array of features, Sothinks Menu builder is also cross-browser, cross-frame and database-driven compatible, and it is fully compatible as a plug-in that integrates smoothly into Dreamweaver or FrontPage. The program download is a little over 2Mb, so developers on a dial-up connection need not cringe, and you can even pay for the it via PayPal. A hearty thumbs-up goes to Sothink.

For those of you that prefer working in a browser, the Apycom DHTML Menu is a great solution. Priced at $29.99 for a single-site license, it\'s a little bit more expensive than other products in its class, but on downloading and using the software, you\'ll see why. Like other browser-based products of this type, it has all the usual features such as ease of use, cross-browser and cross-frame compatibility, but what really makes it stand out from the competition is its tweakability. The menus you create with Apycom DHTML Menu are so customizable that even visitors to your web site can change how the menu appears! This is a big step in the accessibility direction, allowing partially sighted users to increase the font size of your menu items, for example, completely on the fly.

In addition to the above plus points, the Apycom menu maker seems very well suited to making \'start menu\' based menus and not only can your menu items include icons, but these icons can also be animated. All in all, this is an excellent bit of software and well worth the asking price.

For the fully fledged web professional, Apycoms multi-site license, which as the name suggests allows you to create an unlimited number of menus for multiple sites, costs just $99.99. This is relatively cheap for its class, in contrast with its single-site license price. If you\'re a developer that enjoys using a browser, my advice would point in Apycoms direction.

Visual Quick Menu Pro

Many of the companies offering single-site licensed software also offer an unlimited usage professional license, ranging from the above example of $99.99 to around $700. If you fall into the professional category, or have corporate sponsorship, you can get what you need for just $399 by downloading the awesome Visual Quick Menu Pro from www.opencube.com. The application has been around for some time now, it\'s currently on version 5.4, and is trusted by well-respected sites such as Kelkoo and eBay.

The interface is very smooth and surprisingly simple, but don\'t be mislead by this as under the hood it boasts incredible power. The Pontiac Firebird of javascript Menu creation software, this application delivers results swiftly and easily, with style.

You get templates, icon libraries and color schemes that are available at the click of a button, and you need not know even a single line of javascript to use it. The program even generates text files used to modify the menu which you can edit in real-English.

The program does state that the menus produced are compatible with all major browsers, however the javascript files it produces are written in javascript 1.2 so any browser older than IE 4 will not support them.

It is possible to create trendy, interactive menus for your site purely by hand-coding, but with so much software available to choose from, why bother? DHTML has many uses, but if you\'re not fluent in it don\'t let that stop your sites benefiting from it.

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