What would be the best way to achieve this menu?

[jm1786]

At first I tried doing a CSS dropdown menu. But I wanted something a bit more graphical and dynamic.

Here is an empty template page for the website.

http://www.jeffmitch.com/clients/ever-flex/site/index.html

Currenty, the navigation is just one giant .png. (830px x 40px).

this is what I want the menu to look like. But I would also like to have dropdown sub menus from each link...

I know that Fireworks can do imageslices and create CSS/Javascript downdowns, but the coding is so messy and bulky...

I know a bit of flash, so I might be able to do it in flash, but I really wouldn't know where to start.

I could probably do some kind of imagemap where the hotspots trigger a javascript dropdown. I guess that'd be similar slices in Fireworks though...

Anybody have any suggestions?

[shalom_m]

For good pure CSS dropdown menus I suggest you have a look at Stu Nicholls Menu Pages (http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/). They are quite good. I have used his code myself in myself in both Hebrew (the RtoL is my adaptation) (http://marianne.org.il/) and English (http://marianne.org.il/index_e.html) on occasion.

For more complicated multi level code I suggest considering a javascript based code. I have used Milonic DHTML/JavaScript menus (http://www.milonic.com/menusample1.php) successfully at times. They are easy to use and to adapt. See a website i did in German (http://www.jg-regensburg.de/) using this script.

[Sphinx]

I would use Fireworks myself. Seems easier to work with. I would avoid Flash though....just my preference.