Drop down menus

[terryk]

A couple of years ago I put together a website (self-taught) for my local cricket club www.goresbrookcc.co.uk using Microsoft Frontpage. I have had trouble finding a decent programe to build drop down menus. I currently use DHTML Menu Builder (version 2, I think) but depending on the screen size, sometimes the drop downs do not appear directly below the buttons I have selected as the 'hot-spot'.

Any web design gurus have an idea of a good program to use, not too expensive (or free if poss) that I could use, or a fix. Thanks....Terry

 

[ 02. November 2004, 01:41 PM: Message edited by: terryk ]

[FearTheHands]

When you say "drop down menu's" I assume you actually mean the mouse over menu's on your website ?

 

Drop down menu's are actually a form element, not what you have on your website.

 

Frontpage really is a bag of dog toffee & bears no resemblance to the correct way you should be building websites, rather it is Microsoft's version of HTML.

 

I suggest you should use Macromedia Dreamweaver. You can get tons of free plugins that will help you build those type of mouse-over effects & more.

 

The main problem with the positioning of your mouse over menu's (and your website in general) is you are using relative positions instead of absolute, (percentage instead of a fixed position) this will always have different display properties dependent on what size & resolution the user has their monitor set to.

What you see in your WYSIWYG editor need not bear any relation to what is displayed in a browser.

 

You should change your table & cell widths to pixel sizes instead of percentage width.

 

Also do not trust for one second the inbuilt browser that comes with front page, ALWAYS view in a proper browser as you will be seeing 3 different results.

 

I've been a web developer for almost 10 years & changed from using front page to Dreamweaver after about 4 months, believe me you won't regret it.

 

[ 02. November 2004, 04:19 PM: Message edited by: FearTheHands ]

[terryk]

FTH, thanks for your input. I rather suspected Frontpage had it's limitations. As the website itself has evolved in small steps over the last couple of years, I guess it's due a major overhaul. You're correct when you mention the 'mouse-over' menus, does Dreamweaver have this facility to build into the homepage, or do I need a seperate program for that?

 

Thanks again.....Terry

[FearTheHands]

Terry

 

Dreamweaver has certain built in functionality for the type of thing you want to achieve. As I mentioned there is an army of people who create add ons that will do exactly what you want & more as well.

 

I do honestly believe that FP holds amateur developers such as yourself back from moving forward.

 

My missus started out using FP, hen went onto use DW & was amazed at the difference. I will be odd at first, but stick with it & it will be worth it in the long run.

 

If I can be of any further help, then please let me know. I know what it's like starting out :-

[terryk]

FTH, thanks for the advice and the offer. Much appreciated. I've got a 30 day trial copy of DW so I'll give it a whirl....Terry