What about dhtml hide & show directories?

that is "Menus - or DHTML indigestion (a B-movie sequel)"

[Gusgsm]

Good morning, folks

I have been reading the "Menus - or DHTML indigestion thread [webmasterworld.com]" and I would like to ask your opinion for medium range sites about making a short directory that shows and hides subcategories with dhtml. Something like:

1. Subject one. 
2. Subject two. 
3. Subject three. 
4. Subject four. 
5. Subject five.

And with one click over a given 'subject', it turns into:

1. Subject one. 
2. Subject two. 
 a. Issue a. 
 b. Issue b. 
 c. Issue c 
3. Subject three. 
4. Subject four. 
5. Subject five.

Do you find it worthwhile? Could it be a solution better than a full directory? Somehow I feel than from the informative point of view is not a good solution... but I'd like to hear more (and more experimented) opinions. If you have 'factual' info to support them, so much the better.

Thanks a lot :)

[isitreal]

That one makes sense to me, it's pretty easy to implement, you don't have to worry about positioning, can't see what is wrong with it, that's how I'm going to do it on my next rebuild of my site I think, since I have sub-sub menus that I want to access even though the actual page is an iframe.

Keep in mind that if the submenus you put up simply mirror the submenus on the lower levels of the tree, all you are doing is providing the user with the option to avoid an extra mouse click, plus showing them what is available without them having to go all the way into your site.

Just don't make your site navigation dependent on this, since if javascript is turned off, there would be no submenus there, unless you default to all menus exposed if javascript is off, which would look pretty bad.