Easily Create Customized HTML Navigation Bars with Cascading DropDown Menus

Creating custom horizontal or vertical web page navigation bars with cascading menus can be a very tricky task but one which takes just a few simple steps to complete in Webstyle.

Whether you're a time-pressed designer or a complete novice, you can create custom NavBars & Menus easily with Xara Webstyle.

Webstyle offers the easiest way to make customized button bars with cascading DHTML menus. These are the key features:

• Graphic, mouse over highlighting, button bars where you customize the colors, fonts, size etc. Unlike all other methods of creating 'graphical' buttons Webstyle intelligently scales the buttons and Navigation bars to accommodate any length of text without distorting the images. Obtaining the same results using traditional software, such as Adobe Photoshop, would require very complex slice and copy operations.



• Produces highly optimized, smallest possible graphic files for fast download.
  



• NavBars can include cascading, hierarchical, drop-down menus. Webstyle produces ultra-compact Javascript code to support this, compatible with the vast majority of browsers in the market including all the latest browsers, IE5+, Netscape 6+, Mozilla, Opera 7, and Safari (Apple Mac).



• 100+ design templates, all customizable. Both horizontal and vertical navigation bars available.

===> View Templates & Download Xara Webstyle FREE Today!

To see how EASY to use Xara Webstyle is, select the type of graphic you want to create, in this case a Navigation Bar & Menu.

Now you can see all of the 100+ Navigation Bar designs available in Webstyle!



You can edit your graphic by clicking the buttons down the left hand side, which will open the editing dialogs. As you make changes the image will be instantly updated in the preview window, making experimentation easy.

To start creating your custom Navigation Bar you will want to change the appearance of the font and the color of your buttons, so click the Text button to open the text editing dialog. To change the font, simply select the text to change, then select the new font.

The Advanced text dialog gives complete control over the position of the text, tracking, line spacing and aspect ratio.



===> View Templates & Download Xara Webstyle FREE Today!

Changing the colors is just as easy. Simply click the Colors button, select the part of the graphic to change, then choose the new colors. It's the same procedure for all of the elements of a graphic. All of the changes take place instantly and can be viewed in the preview window.

To create a New button, you simply double-click the blue 'Click to Add Button' text and type your button text. A new button will automatically be created. You can do the same to create menus and sub-menus. At any time, you can re-arrange the ordering of the buttons or the menus simply by dragging and dropping them to a new location or you can delete them by selecting the button or menu and clicking Delete.

You can change the button text by double clicking and simply typing in the new text. URLs, target windows and Alt text can be added in the same way.



The controls for the menu text and behavior are located in the Menu Properties dialog. Here, you can set the menu font (as a brief technical aside, the text on menus is different from the text on buttons. The buttons in our NavBar are graphics whereas the menus are purely HTML - which means that the fonts you can use for a menu are limited to a short list of 'browser safe' fonts, which are shown in this drop down menu). You can also set the font size, bold or italic, menu spacing, the direction the menu will open and how fast it appears and transparency. And you can add borders and separators to the menus.

Once you have completed the changes to your Navigation Bar, it's time to export it. To save your Navigation Bar and menus you just select the Save option. Webstyle optimizes the graphics to be as small as possible and displays the size in both pixels and k. The Advanced save dialog also has options to change the number of colors, dithering and transparency. It's interactive and instant - the size figures and the image update as the settings are altered. Which means no more trial and error!

You can preview your Navigation Bar in a browser at this point if you want to, or simply export it. It will be automatically saved with all the necessary HTML and JavaScript.



===> View Templates & Download Xara Webstyle FREE Today!

With just a few clicks, you can add Navigation Bars to your web page. So simple with Menu Maker - even your granny could do it.

Menu Maker includes over 300 top-quality graphical NavBar designs which can be easily customized.

Menu Maker Features:

• Menu Maker is a dedicated tool for creating NavBars and menus so there's no UI bloat!




• Creates dynamic NavBars and menus in just a few clicks




• All necessary JavaScript and HTML is automatically created for you




• Graphics are automatically optimized for the web to keep file sizes small




• Seamless integration with Dreamweaver and FrontPage so you can add and edit Menu Maker NavBars from within these popular html editors.




• All Menu Maker's NavBar templates are designed by professional graphic artists




• Change color, texture, font, text, background and size with absolutely no loss of quality due to Xara's world beating vector graphic engine




• Uniquely, buttons automatically stretch and shrink to fit your button text




• Choose from vertical or horizontal Navigation Bar designs

===> View Templates & Download Xara Menu Maker FREE Today!

With Xara's Menu Maker, rollover states and DHTML menus can be added with ease. See the examples »

===> More Menu Maker features...

• Vertical or horizontal pop-out menus



• Add animated transitions



• Totally customizable: change colors, fonts, border and spacing



• Uniquely compact menu code produces small file sizes