14 DAY TRIAL // What would be the Web without all its pages? But what would be a web page without a proper menu? A menu gives you fast access to the information about the page. It is the most important element of a page. Without it you could spend a lot of precious time searching for what you need.
Creating a web menu is as simple as one, two, three. Some time ago it used to be a little more difficult, but today, with a software loaded of nice presets a page menu can be designed in less than five minutes. At least that's the amount of time I spent with A4 Menu Builder.
The application is developed by FAICO Information Solutions and the price they're asking is $39.95. When I first started the application, I thought that this must be a complicated software that did nothing but confuse me. But soon after starting to navigate with the built in wizard I realized that I was done and ready to save the project to my computer.
The first screen of the wizard will ask you to choose to start a new project or load one from your hard drive. Next is the preset menu design selection window. It provides you with more then enough options as there are eight themes available: Standard, Business 1.0, Business 2.0, Sport 1.0, Global 1.0, Cyber 1.0, Holiday 1.0 and Romantic 1.0.
They are similar in what concerns the display of the buttons in the window, but the shape of the buttons differs. Each theme makes available six different designs, so I guess that 48 menus are enough to choose from. When clicking on one template, it will be displayed in the preview window. And if you pass with the mouse over the items of the menu you will have a live experience on how it'll move and what submenus are available. OK button takes you to the final step of creating yourself a menu.
The user gets to customize the place of the items in the page, the font, colors etc. The logo of the company, as well as the other elements, can be moved by selecting the desired element you want to relocate and dragging the horizontal and vertical sliders.
The Menu Information window contains all the options to type in the name of your company or website, the baseline/description, add a logo image and an audio file (.mp3). Each item in the menu structure can be changed and you can add as many submenus as you want. The text you introduce as the company name or baseline can be personalized and change the font, font style, size and color. A nice feature is the preview window that shows in real time the changes you make.
The same changes can be applied to the text of the buttons and you can rename a button, add a URL, set the target (mainframe, self, parent, top or blank) or change the position. If the color of the buttons is not to your taste then a change can be done very easily. Suffice to go to the Customize Menu Color window and select the level for your changes (for both normal and active view).
The application is thoroughly thought and it even allows its users to create the icon links. The Icon Link Options window is divided into two parts. The first one is for establishing the colors to use for the normal link and the active one. Below there are the linking options, as well as the icon settings.
After the menu is created you can save it for further editing with A4 Flash Menu Builder or you can publish it directly. The only thing is that you cannot use it as one limitation is the software watermark on the menu header.
The Good
It will not take more than five minutes to create a flash menu once you have run once through the program. The presets are easy to work with and the software displays the changes in real time. Very flexible in all concerns.
The background can be replaced with an image on your computer.
The Bad
The watermark applied on the final result. I could not find anywhere an option to arrange the submenus or menus vertically.
The Truth
I liked the software and I quite understand the watermark baddie. The application moves fine and you do not need any programming knowledge. The Online Help will provide you with the answers to your questions.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
