| Menu Design Guide
Web buttons and animated buttons
See also: list of web buttons and animated buttons
Design considerations for web buttons
- Rollover state. The rollover state of a button is the
new appearance it adopts when the mouse moves over it. Typical rollover state
features include: colour change of text and background, underline.
The rollover state is the simplest and most basic feature
for any menu, and yet, strangely, for some technologies it is very difficult
to achieve, javascript menus (also known as DHTML menus) require
tortured code for this, because for years almost every browser version needed
different code for this. Buy a DHTML menu, and it may not even do the rollover
state properly in all browsers. For true java, on the other hand, there are
no such problems. True java web buttons really will give you reliable rollover
states.
- Image buttons. The next key feature to think about when
choosing a web button is images. Does your chosen menu have the ability to
read in images (GIF's, JPG's) which you have designed yourself, and turn
these into attractive buttons? Many web developers have difficulty with images,
so you may need to see if the product of your choice comes with a good set
of images for you to choose from. But if your skills include graphic design,
look carefully at the options for using your own images.
- Animated effects. Very cool animated effects can be
obtained. A good button menu can apply dramatic image processing effects to
your own images. Remember that image processing is memory intensive, so don't
make animated buttons too large, especially if you are running other memory
intensive media plug-ins on your page.
- Press-in effect. You can obtain menus which have more states
than just a rollover state. Do you want your buttons to "press-in" when clicked?
Or do you want them to have an "active" state showing that the hyperlink in
question is the current choice and current page?
- Multiple buttons. The old FrontPage hover buttons encouraged
designers to have one applet for each button! This is inefficient. Look for
menus which will handle all your button needs in a single applet - arranging
them in a column or bar as required.
- Remote rollover effects. Have you seen menu items which,
when you place the mouse over them, cause changes elsewhere on the page, such
as instantly exchanging one image for another?
Advanced web buttons may have the capacity to trigger changes elsewhere on the page when rolled over.
If you want this feature, look for java buttons which support user-definable onMouseEnter and
onMouseExit events.
List of menu design guides:
web buttons and animated buttons,
drop-down menus,
tree menus,
image-map menus,
menu tabs,
sliding menus.
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