Help for Church Webmasters
Issue 14
07/05/02
In the last newsletter, I shared with you why I think
it is not a good idea to use Rollovers in your navigation scheme. Those reasons
include that it is too slow, the user knows when their mouse is over a button,
and there are more interesting things to do with rollovers that will make your
site unique. I also promised that we would talk about more interesting
navigation schemes in this newsletter.
Before we do that we should consider what these “more
interesting” navigation schemes will do to us.
A natural question is, with all these limitations, why
would anyone use these techniques? It turns out that all these problems are
easily overcome with one solution. A site map. Every page in your site will
have a link (probably at the bottom page) to a plain html page that has the
links for every page in your site. Very simple, very easy to maintain. But that
simple page will allow search engines and users who don’t have the required
technology to navigate your site. Sweet.
I am going to share some site where you can get your
own nifty navigation system. It’s a personal decision as to which one you want
to use. But you should consider this. Some of these javascripts require certain
things. Things like a framed site (you know how I feel about those) or a
certain browser and version (usually IE). While IE certainly does own the
majority of the market, there is a new Netscape available. If AOL (who owns
Netscape) decides to make that their default browser – A LOT more people will
be using Netscape. So make sure that your navigation system will work in all
current browsers and that it doesn’t have a limitation you don’t like (frames
for example).
This site has a bunch of menus. A few are free, most
you pay for. http://www.imint.com/index.html
There are some really good examples and ideas here.
This site has links to many different javascript menus.
http://freewarejava.com/applets/menus.shtml
Be sure to check them out before you use these.
This is a fun one that I used on page that I developed
for another church. http://popup.jscentral.com/
It is reasonably priced and works pretty well too. It has some unique features
that are kind of fun (it moves down the page as you scroll down).
These are just a few examples of what you can do. But I think if you save your rollovers
for things on your site instead of the navigation and use one of these
javascripts to spruce up you navigation that you will have an interesting site
that people will want to visit.
See ya,
Bill
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the fine print…
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