Getting Started

This is not a tutorial site. Sothink has an an extensive DHTML Menu Tutorial Center with tutorials on getting started and more advanced subjects. Also, the DHTML Menu program has a Help section. The suggestions we offer here are based on our use of DHTML menu They work for us, and they might work for you, too. Before we start with the step-by-step instructions, here are three recommendations that we feel are important:

  • Use DHTML menu as a standalone program. If you use Adobe GoLive, Dreamweaver, Expression Web, or FrontPage you may be tempted to integrate DHTML menu with your Web authoring software using one of the plug-ins supplied with DHTML menu. Do not succumb to the temptation; if you do, you are making more work for yourself and asking for trouble.

  • Do not include menu code in your pages. Always generate a JavaScript include file. There are many advantages to having your menu in an external JavaScript file, but perhaps the most important advantage is that you only have to edit and upload a single file whenever your menu changes.

  • Unless you use Dreamweaver CS4, download and install Google's Chrome Browser. We're not suggesting that you give up Firefox or Internet Explorer, but Chrome is an excellent browser for previewing menus and Web pages. It is based on the WebKit browser framework, and it is very fast and fairly standards-compliant.

For this exercise, we created an actual site with a working menu. Here are the steps:

1) On our local system we created a folder named "newsite", and within the "newsite" folder we created a folder named "menu".

2) We developed a fixed width Web page with a header, top navigation, content, and footer.

3) We developed a DHTML Menu based on the "Dark" template.

a. We highlighted <Top-level Menu> in the menu tree and then selected Global>Resource Folder.

     Global_Resource Folder

b. In Global - Resource Folder, we clicked on the "Switch to Web Path" icon in the upper right corner.

switch to web path

c. Under Web Path, we entered menu/ for both JavaScript and Images.

Web Path

The example shown above will work if you have a single level site. However, if your site has multiple levels, if you are using a PHP template, or if you just want to be safe, enter a complete path such as http://yourdomain.com/menu/.
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