Easy Dynamic Menus for a Web Site

Dynamic menus are a great way to add life to a website.

A website menu, or navigational bar, plays a vital role in how a user can explore a website. A dynamic menu, in particular, enhances your visitor's experience and adds life to web pages. There are several ways to create a dynamic menu for a website, and the opportunities are endless when it comes to incorporating colors and fonts.

HTML Editor

To begin creating dynamic menus for websites, you should have basic knowledge of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML), Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript. You can easily design and edit dynamic menu bars with web design editing software like Adobe Dreamweaver or Coffee Cup. To begin, use HTML coding to create a horizontal or vertical navigational bar. Attach a style sheet to your HTML page to change the color, font and design of your menu. You then will need to embed JavaScript coding to produce dynamic content to your menu. There are some useful websites that provide free HTML and JavaScript codes you can use to produce dynamic menus.

Photoshop

If you have some experience in Photoshop, you can easily customize menu buttons. Simply create the content you wish to add to your website and save the finished product in JPEG format. Next, insert the JPEG images to your HTML editor and add the JavaScript coding to the images to create the look you want to produce.

Photo Gallery Software

Photo gallery software also can be used to create dynamic menus. Once you create your menu buttons in Photoshop, create a photo album of the menu. With most photo gallery software, you can change the theme, timing and speed of your menu and insert individual hyperlinks. This method is a great way to create a dynamic menu if you are a novice in web development coding.

CSS Sprites

CSS sprites can be useful in achieving the dynamic menu effect without the need of JavaScript coding. Sprites are simply files that contain multiple images, but only one image is displayed at a time. In order to create a CSS sprite, you will need to apply a background image or color to each (or all) of the buttons on your menu bar. You can then use your HTML editor to have the images appear when users roll their mouse over the bar.

Software

It will benefit you to invest in some dynamic software. Adobe Fireworks is a great Flash-making tool to get the dynamic menus you want to achieve.

References

• Dev Articles; JavaScript; Building a Dynamic Menu with CSS and JavaScript
• Web Menu Maker; Create Dynamic Menu with CSS