Adding Rollovers and Navigation Bars in Dreamweaver Support
Letting the visitor know where they are and where they are going are the key ingredients for a good navigation system. Yet, with static HTML, this can be problematic. There is a limited amount of space on the computer screen, and Web designs have to walk the narrow line between providing enough information to let the visitor know what is going on and not overwhelming them with so much information that they can not find what they are looking for. Fortunately, JavaScript allows us to make quick changes to a Web page in reaction to the visitor's actions without having to reload the page.
A more advanced form of the rollover is the Navigation bar. This allows you to quickly assemble a collection of menu options with rollovers, which you can conveniently edit at any time.
Dreamweaver did not invent the rollover or the navigation bar, but both Dreamweaver MX and Dreamweaver MX 2004 allow you set them up quickly and easily without having to know all of the complexities of JavaScript.
Jason Cranford Teague
Jason Cranford Teague has been working in digital media design since 1994. Over the years, his clients have included Bank of America, Coca-Cola, Virgin, CNN, Kodak, Siemens, The European Space Agency, and WebMD. A graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he spent a very cold year getting his M.S. in Technical Communication, Jason is regularly asked to speak at conferences about design for Web, print, and video. An internationally recognized writer and columnist, Jason is the author of numerous books and articles including the best selling DHTML and CSS for the World Wide Web (Peachpit Press), Final Cut Express Solutions (Sybex), Dreamweaver MX Magic (New Riders), and Photoshop CS at Your Fingertips (Sybex). In addition, he has written for the Apple Developers Connection, Computer Arts Magazine, Macworld Magazine, and The Independent Newspaper as well as appearing on TechTV's “The Screen Savers.” Jason is currently running Bright Eye Media (www.brighteyemedia.com), which specializes in Web sites for education and entertainment.