14 DAY TRIAL // A "network of networks". What could that be if not the Internet? The Internet is a worldwide public network made up of millions of smaller interconnected computer networks. The Internet is public, can be accessed by millions of people and carries information and services such as email, electronic chat, web pages or file transfer.
We all know by now that advertising on the Internet and online shopping have reached new levels of exploitation. For the online selling business having a well structured webpage plays a very important role for the business. Most web pages are created by professionals, but very few of us know that nowadays you do not have to be an expert in writing HTML or Java lines.
There is software that does that for you and the user works only with the interface in order to create a web page or even an entire website.
AllWebMenus PRO is a web page menu creator from Likno Software. The free download version is a shareware and the full version usually costs $59.95, but if you hurry up you can buy it with $39.95 (the offer is available until August 21st).
If you are familiar with the terms of the software (not that they are too hard to understand) you can make your own menu for your web page in approximately 20 minutes (depending on the number of submenus you need). Of course, you can also do it in five minutes if you are using the menu templates in the application and there is not a very large options tree.
Your work (from creating to saving) at a menu with AllWebMenus PRO can be done in five easy steps. First you have to have an idea on how your menu should look like: number of items, submenu groups, naming of the options, etc. After you have carefully planned the structure of the menu you can proceed to creating it.
Adding items and submenus is as easy as right-clicking. Really!!! Right-click on an item and press "Add Item" or "Add Submenu Group to Item". In the right side of the application window there are two options that have the role of displaying the menu items and groups and subgroups properties.
The first one is the Menu Editor where you can name the items (normal mode, mouse over it and mouse click), add image and link to them. In the "Advanced" category the user can define the properties for opening the link (in the same frame or window as the menu location, in a new browser window or in a full browser window and inside a specific frame), edit the status bar text, create a tooltip, set a separator bar between the items or insert a Javascript command.
The user can assign a style for every item of the menu. There are lots of options, like content alignment and padding, text font, size and color, background color, images, area size, etc. The menu can be aligned vertically or horizontally, according to your wish. You can align the main menu group vertically and the submenu group horizontally.
In the Menu Editor the user practically makes the settings for each item. You can apply different colors for each item of a submenu group. In the Style Editor the user will define a style for all the items of the main group or subgroups. The functionality of this option is fully discovered if you do not want to define each item at a time.
Step number two is Linking your menu to the web page. Compile the menu with the help of the software (find the icon at the end of the toolbar or go to Tools>Compile Menu). You have to specify the site root folder in Project Properties> Folders under Tools.
After all these have been set, click the Link Menu icon in the toolbar. The linking process allows you to select the HML docs that will carry the menu. Make sure that the AllWebMenus menu-linking section is not inserted in the inside table or font and tags.
Step three refers to positioning the menu in the web page. There are two methods for this: Window relative positioning (the menu is positioned to a corner or edge of the browser window) or Element-Relative Positioning (the menu is positioned near a user defined element on the page). You can set the offset X and Y of the menu and of the Internet browser (IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, IE for MAC, Safari and Konqueror).
The last two steps are uploading the menu on the web server and saving your work. You can choose not to save your work, but it will come in handy for future editing.
The Good
The software requires absolutely no DHTML or Javascript knowledge. It will definitely make your work easier as it does not involve absolutely any code.
The user can go to the Style Gallery and choose a predefined appearance for the menu, or start editing from there.
The Bad
The shareware version has the compiling and linking the menu restricted.
The Truth
AllWebMenus is a great menu builder that is available for a really low price. It does not matter if you are a novice in menu building because the software provides a Help menu that offers all the information you need.
The preview feature allows you to see in just a few seconds the results of your menu design.
Here are some snapshots of the application in action:
