User interface: triangular "switch" to indicate submenus

Is this now standard? How best to implement it?

[anax]

For years I've used the ellipsis ... to indicate that a menu choice on a webpage had more sub-items available. This comes from the general Mac/PC user interface standard (look in the dropdown menus on your desktop). So on my pages if a user sees a link in the sidebar like this:

Widgets...

it means that when you click on it you'll get:

Widgets
Blue Widgets
Green Widgets
Yellow Widgets

It seems that in the past year or two it's becoming popular to use a triangular "switch" symbol to indicate this sort of thing: pointing right to indicate "more" and then pointing down when the link is followed and the submenus are displayed.

So, should I change my ... to triangles? Does everyone recognize what they mean?

If so, how best to implement them? I see there are a couple of Unicode characters that would work if they are available via all browsers: 9655 and 9661

I don't know if they'll display here:

▷ ▽

(Note: I'm only talking about the appearance of the interface, not how to program submenus.)

[Fotiman]

In my experience, you are trying to compare apples and oranges.

Ellipsis (...) used in application menus typically means that clicking on it will bring you to a new page/dialog with additional items. This could even be a modal dialog.

Collapsed/Expanded arrows are used to show/hide additional "child" information or navigation.

I would not really consider them to be interchangeable as you have described it.

[anax]

Point taken. I was using the ellipsis way back five years ago or more when there weren't many customary ways of indicating such things, so at the time it was a reasonable approach.

So if the triangles are to be used, what's the best device? I don't want to use img files; Unicode characters would seem to be best. Are there other choices I haven't thought of?

Many thanks.

[Fotiman]

I don't want to use img files;

Why not?

I view this as purely presentational, so I use CSS (background images) to control it. For example, the "parent" object would have a class representing the state of the object (collapsed/expanded). Then you just toggle the class on the parent, and the background image changes.