Navigation menu building in iWeb

iWeb for Musicians

Build Your Own Navigation Menu

Main Navigation Menu:

Music Website iWeb Audio Files Music Players Applications SEO Promote Tricks EBlast HTML5 Players

Navigation

To get surfers to swish around your website you have to provide the tools so that they don’t get lost or confused and give up in despair. Websites are for informing people - not to make them play head games. Unlike a maze, you can escape a website with one click and never look back.

You’ve probably noticed by now that this website is divided into “Sections”. All of these sections are listed in the “Main Navigation” across the top so that if you get bored with one, you can quickly jump to another.

Each section has a “Sub Navigation Menu” to guide you through it. I have subtly made you aware of it by using the title “Navigate This Section:”.

I guess you have been wondering why I don’t use the standard iWeb navigation that generates itself as you add pages. You can’t easily alter the look, style and function of this menu and, if you have more than a few pages in your website, it starts to get out of control making your page look top heavy.

Most of the visitors to your site will be those poor unfortunates using Internet Explorer on a PC.

If Java is turned off in this pathetic browser, your menu will appear as a black dot!

Building your own menu has a lot of advantages. You can....

Choose your own fonts and colors.

Have your links underlined or not.

Use different combinations of colors and rollover colors.

Make it horizontal like my main menu or vertical like the sub menu.

Duplicate it at the bottom of long pages.

Insert hyperlinks to “external” pages which may be another site you have.

And so on.....

The menu is made in a text box, the links created in the “Link” inspector and then the whole thing is copied and pasted to each page of your site.

Here’s an example using different web-safe fonts and colors ............

Run your mouse down it to see the color changes.

Planet Roddy

Cosmystic Music

Mirror Of The Universe

IndieRhythm

CD Baby

My Space

Button Menus

Building your own menus in a text box is not the only way to go if you have patience and tenacity. I have very little of either!

These horizontal and vertical button menus which change color on mouse over and jump to another page when clicked are courtesy of 11 Mystics.

The button and font colors can be changed along with the font, text colors, button shapes etc.

Get the full story and instructions at.....

http://11mystics.com/2008/05/21/create-rounded-corner-rollover-buttons/

While you’re there, have a look around at the high quality material available from this amazing designer. Suzzane is one incredible web crafter or web weaver or ........!

Drop Down Menu

The third menu is a simple example of the mouse over drop down variety.

This type is much sought after by those who want to stun and impress us with their flashy web building techniques.

I, of course, haven’t a clue how to do this sort of thing.

I got the basic code from using the generator at http://www.ricocheting.com/js/drop.html and proceeded to mess about with it until I got bored and stuck the result on this page.

For information about using mouse over or roll over images as hyperlinks or navigation links go to:

http://roddymckay.com/PhotoSatellite/MouseOverImages.html