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Drop Down Menus With Standards Support
Drop Down Menus have been part of the DHTML dictionary for a long time. They're a popular way to cram lots of navigation elements into a small amount of space. They work in a similar way to the menus that everybody is used to using in other programs, so offer a familiar environment.
The trouble is that many of the DHTML menus you'll find out there are from the bad old days of the browser wars, they use huge amounts of code to check for compatibilities, and fail to take into account accessibility or web standards.
In this article we'll look at some of the ways you can build a Drop Down menu using CSS and W3C DOM (document object model)-based JavaScript. We'll also look at some options for improving the menu's accessibility.
A basic knowledge of JavaScript and CSS is recommended for this tutorial.
Matt Machell
A man of many talents, Matt has been a web designer, technical editor, and jewellery picker. He is currently on contract for the Birmingham City University, producing pages for research centres.
He has tech-edited a dozen books on web design and development for glasshaus, Apress and Sitepoint.
He likes music with loud guitars and games with obscure rules.
His website can be found at: http://www.eclecticdreams.com
He lives in Birmingham with his girlfriend, Frances, and a horde of spider plants.