menu bars vs drop down menus

[rdcrowley]

Sorry if this is explained in another thread. I've ready many of them and scanned all the thread titles and can't find my answer.

I've watched all the hyperlinking tutorials and I was wondering what's the advantage of using a menu bar vs a drop down menu? Is the menu bar only used to jump from one page to another, while a drop down menu can jump you to a specific location on another page (if it's linked to some text on the other page)? If so, I'd love to use the menu bar for this purpose, but I don't want to head down that path and do a lot of work only to find out it was a bad direction.

Please advise!!

Thanks,
rdcrowley

[Robert]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

try searching the forums using "drop-down menu" keyword variations, but also Google this topic along the lines of search engine page ranking and spiders as well.

there was a discussion about browser concerns:

http://www.vodahost.com/vodatalk/adding-elements-your-website/13324-drop-down-menu-browser-concerns.html?highlight=drop+menus

[Bethers]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

You basically can use menus to do just about anything you want them to do - whether a menu bar, text links or drop down menus. However, it's very important to realize that drop down menus can occasionally be difficult for people to us - and search engines don't read them - so if you use drop down menus, make sure you either have footer links of all pages or a good sitemap where all pages are easy to find.

[Jeremy]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

[media]http://www.bwservices.ca/slide-nav-top.swf[/media]

There is a nice example.

[rdcrowley]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

Thanks for the feedback. I really like the "sleekness" the drop down menus give a web site and I feel it would add to the ease of navigating the site. It I do use them, how do I make the "footer links on the pages or have a good sitemap where all pages are easy to find".

[rdcrowley]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

HELP!!!
I'm having problems with the drop down menu bars.

I'll try to explain my problem and hopefully someone can tell me what to do.

First, I created the drop down menu and for some of the items, I have secondary items listed under them.

When I preview it, the secondary items do drop down which is great but they extend over the top of the text on that page. This shouldn't be a problem because I've seen many sites where this happens.

Here lies my problem, first when the secondary items drop down and extend on top of my text, you can't read them because them blend into the text on the page.

Second problem, when I drag my mouse over the top of the secondary items that have dropped down over the text of the page, the menu drop down part goes away and the mouse tries to pick up the text of the page.

I may not have done a very good job at explaining my problem so if you would like for me to explain it further, I'd be glad to because right now I'm stuck.

I don't want to keep going this direction my typing in all the URLs, etc. if I can't resolve this problem.

Thanks,
rdcrowley

[rdcrowley]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

Forgive me, I'm an idiot.

I figured out that if you "bring it forward" in the editing it resolves this problem.

Sorry for the panic!!

[rdcrowley]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

I have another problem.

I'm trying to link a page in my site to a text block. I've watched the tutorial and I think I've done it correctly but when I preview the page, it doesn't show up as a web site link (ie. blue, highlighted and underlined).

And when I go back into the text block hyperlink, it doesn't show the link I originally typed in and I have to re-type everything.

Will this not show up until the site is actually published or what?

Thanks,
rdcrowley

[navaldesign]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

No, the links should show, even if they will not actually work. However, without seing it, i'm not sure what that would be

[rdcrowley]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

Navaldesign,
Thanks for the post. With your reassurance I went back and watched the tutorial again and my problem was that I was just clicking on the text block, not highlighting the entire text in the block. Doing so, it now shows up as a web link.
Thanks again,

By the way, do you link to Adobe files the same way?
rdcrowley

[rdcrowley]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

I tried it the same way and it shows up as a link. Hopefully, it'll work when I publish the site.

[rdcrowley]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

Can anyone tell me how to "lock" my page width? I have no problems locking a text block or image but for some reason I can't get the page width locked and it keeps changing on me everytime I open a page.
Thanks,
rdcrowley

[navaldesign]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

It will work ok, no worries. The link to a pdf file should be : http://www.yourdomain.com/filename.pdf

[navaldesign]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

Can anyone tell me how to "lock" my page width? I have no problems locking a text block or image but for some reason I can't get the page width locked and it keeps changing on me everytime I open a page.
Thanks,
rdcrowley

This means that you have something outside the limit that you are trying to set. BV will automatically check the page, and if it finds something outside the set limit, it will readjust the page width to include the objects that are outside the set page width. In View, enable Object Outlines, as this will make visible eventual objects that you can't see (as, i.e. blank text boxes) so you can delete them.

[rdcrowley]

Re: menu bars vs drop down menus

Thanks for the tip on the .pdf files because I set them to .html

Also, thanks for the page width tips, I'll go in and check them out.

rdcrowley