spiderable drop down menus

is there a way to create drop down menus that are fully spiderable

[herbacious]

Hi there People ;-)

a site i am working on has outgrown its old navigation method in terms of the amount of pages (and the fact i think it looks poo).

so i am wanting to go for a drop down menu style navigation that will allow me to easily add new pages and links to the navigation without altering how much screen real estate it takes up.

however - it is also very important that the links in the navigation are fully spiderable - so as far as i can see java script is out of the question.

however - it also has to be fully user friendly and work - so pure CSS is out of the question thanks to the dominance of IE.

so - anyone know how i can implement drop down menu navigation whilst maintaining full spiderability and cross browser usablity?

thanks a lot in advance for your help - if you want to see some of the pages i have been reading on this subject PM me.

[PatomaS]

Hello

There is no problem about it...

use html or xhtml and css for the drop downs

:)

Here you can see a good example

[meyerweb.com...]

Hope it helps

[herbacious]

thanks a lot for your reply PatomaS

however - i had come across this, but the problem is that it will not work in internet explorer - or in other words, the vast majority of internet users...

that means that it probably isn't worth the effort on a commercial site.

are there any other ideas out there or shall i admit defeat on this one?

[Birdman]

so - anyone know how i can implement drop down menu navigation whilst maintaining full spiderability and cross browser usablity?

Easy, add a good sitemap and link(real link) to it from every page. Your site should get spidered then.

[herbacious]

Thanks for the suggestion Birdman, i was aware of this as an option - in fact we have a site map at the moment - but it isn't up to date :-/

this wouldn't be my ideal solution though as i would really like every page to link to every other page via a comprehensive spiderable drop down menu navigation.

any other ideas?

[rogerdp]

See [alistapart.com...]

[herbacious]

thanks for the link rogerdp -

interesting reading - i had come across using nested lists and then the "hover" CSS rule before, but the stumbling block is that it does not work in IE..

this does look like a workaround that works :-)

if anyone else has any other ideas or comments about this please post...

cheers people :^D

##(edit)## looking closer at this - it is good, but i need there to be a solid colour under the text - what would be the best way to do this do you think?

[R1chard]

The good old html form is fully compatible with everyone. Just use SELECT and OPTGROUP and you can't go wrong...

[Hagstrom]

The suckerfish example looks great - and the page appears when searching for backlinks:
h*tp://www.google.com/search?q=link%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fanimaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu%2Faccounts%2Fremora%2Fr._remora.html

<aside>I can't read about remoras without thinking of Dilbert :)</aside>

[PatomaS]

Well...

You say that the examples shown in the previos posts doesn't work in IE ... What version?, it works in my IE, 5.5 and 6, in deed it have to work in all the browsers that claim to be css and html compilat.

But... about other idea, you can use JavaScript for this menus, the proble with it, is that you have to make a browser detection script because the pixel size in IE and Netscape are not the same as well Opera.

But if you are interested just in IE, forget about check the navigator ad use some div's and JavaScript for this menus, it always works

:)

Good luck

[john_k]

If those examples don't work for IE, then do browser detection and send IE users something that does work. Both IE and the spiders will be happy that way.