Lesson 18
Navigation Menus
There are many options you can use when creating a navigation menu for your
website. This lesson will try and touch on some of the options available to
you.
Using Home, Next, Back Buttons
This is an easy option, but with this
option it does not make all pages in the web within easy reach. These
buttons may be good on a small personal website but I do not believe they
serve any purpose at all on a large website. I did not include a link to a
site using these as I do not have a site using these buttons.
Java Applets
This is what is
used for Ask Maggy Mae at the time of writing this lesson. What I like about
using the Java Applet is that I created templates for my website, so every
time I create a new page I use the template which has all my JavaScript,
Java Applets, hit counter, blocker, and my background table all set up. All
I need to do is enter the text for the new page. Then all I need to do is
open the menu file for the Applet and enter the page into that file along
with the link, I do not have to edit every page in my web to add 1 new page
to each navigation menu. This I find to be the easiest way to set up a
navigation menu for a large site. You can use it like it is in this website,
in one cell of the background table, or you could use it on a page of it's
own and use frames, the menu would be on the left frame and the main page
will be on the right frame, or the other way around if you prefer. But no
matter what, you only need to edit and upload the menu.txt file if any
changes are to be made with your navigation. You can find links to sites
that offer free Java Applets in the Intro to
Java Tutorial.
JavaScript
There is also the option of using JavaScript for your navigation menu. There
are many free scripts out there that are available to the public. You can
find links to sites that offer free JavaScripts at Ask Maggy Mae
in this thread.
JavaScript & Forms
The combination of JavaScript and Forms are an option for your navigation
menu. The dropdown box is one example of how you could use JavaScript and
Forms to create your navigation menu. Again though, I don't believe it would
work very well with a large website but is compact and easily coded for a
smaller website. The dropdown box below giving you options to see some of
the items I have described in this lesson is done with JavaScript and Forms.
FrontPage Views Bar - Navigation
Something we have not yet discussed in these FrontPage tutorials is the
Views bar and the uses it serves. One of the uses is when you click on the
Navigation icon, you are suddenly faced with a blue screen with your index
page sitting there. But, if you drag and drop from your folder list to a
place under your index page in the navigation view, each of your pages in
your web you are setting up your web to be able to use one of the web
components included with FrontPage. It gives you another option for a
navigation menu. The sample site used for this was created by me using
FrontPage. The school is an actual school owned by a friend's mother, I
designed the site then overhauled the site as a favour. I will go into the
views bar in more detail in a future lesson.
Text & Buttons
If your page is set up similarly to how I have mine, with tables you could
use the left cell as your navigation menu and simply add links to all your
pages in that cell, or create buttons to add to it and use the buttons for
links in that cell. The Text Links choice in the dropdown box for this is a
site I created for a neighbour I had a few years back that were starting
their own business. The Button Links choice takes you to a website I built a
few years back for a friend who's sister has been missing since the 1960's.
The navigation buttons on this website are inserted into FrontPage using the
web component option.
Use the dropdown box below to view sample pages of the above options.
