Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 04/09/07 12:44

Scripsit Desmond:

> Ok this is going to get messy.

Then I think you should simplify, rather than look for new complications.

> The original site had the menu on every
> page, making changes difficult.

That's a common symptom of excessive navigation, or navigatitis. The simple
solution is to make the primary links the main content of the main page and
make other pages link just to the main page. If you don't like this idea,
live with the consequences. Generally, the main menu should seldom be
changed. Frequent changes to it indicate bad design.

> but at least it kept the active menu hi-lighted.

What's "active menu"? I suppose you mean the currently selected menu _item_.
Actually it should be down-lighted rather than highlighted, and it should
not be a link. Self-referencing links are a no-no.

> I have taken out the menus on a test site and placed the
> menu in a seperate file for inclusion. I can't get the site to
> remember which menu item is the current one.

You would need more than simple inclusion, of course.

> The original site is
> http://www.yorkbaptist.org.uk/activities.html

Many navigational links wrap to two lines, making the menu rather confusing.
I think this is more serious than the problem you described - and I cannot
see that problem, really. Highlighting links on mouseover works well, since
it operates on the <a> elements, which are inline and just take the width
they need.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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