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Some PHP Tips and 'Tricks'

Thinking beyond each page and DESIGNING your web site

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Simple menu systems

Remember a menu or navigation menu on a web page is just a collection of links to navigate to other web pages on your site or other web sites.

First off, the discussion is on the many types you can choose and their advantages and disadvantages. Menu types are basically one or more of these types in almost any combination -

• Direction - Horizontal and Vertical
• Pop-up menus sometimes called dropdown or pullout menus
• Image Map
• Image Buttons
• Text as pseudo buttons
• Straight text links
• Expanding or Folding menu trees
• Floating menus

The following describes the issues as web pages viewed on normal computer monitors, viewing web pages on PDAs, mobile phones and other mobile devices with small screens in size and resolution has a lot of other issues, not covered here. These devices make web pages more difficult to design to be viewed on both types of screens.

Personally I do not believe most mobile devices are suited for the majority of web pages, with their large images and various methods of animation/video/sound encoding.

Finally I describe a mechanism for a vertical, expanding, text pseudo button menu system with include files for each open level. If you have not worked it out, I describe the menu system on the left.