After content, navigation is the most important feature of a website. You want your users to be able to find what they need in an easy and enjoyable fashion.

When choosing a menu for the Scotch Plains Public Library, I wanted one that would be both functional and vibrant. Initially I set up the menu in basic white and gray. As the graphic designer chose a colorful and playful logo, the staff and I wanted a fun menu to go with it. The one I used is a mootools script by Jonathan Snook.

If you do choose a menu with Javascript (jQuery is a library of Javascript, so a menu using jQuery uses Javascript), make sure it works even with the Javascript turned off. You can try this with the Scotch Plains Library site. Go to the site, and try the menu. The colors should change in a wavy manner from royal blue to lime green. If they just change without waving, your Javascript is already turned off. To see how the menu works with and without Javascript, you can do (in Firefox) Tools -> Options -> Content and you will see this screen:

There’s a little checkbox near Enable Javascript, so you can either enable or disable it accordingly. Here’s instructions for Internet Explorer and for Safari.

Getting back to our main topic, which is choosing a menu: there are many choices. You can find a many that uses CSS sprites or one that makes use of jQuery. Don’t be surprised if you decide on one menu, implement it, and then discover that for some reason it is not a good option for your site. On another site I have been trying out several of Stu Nicholls’ excellent menus. Please be sure if you use his menus to follow his requests.

I will write more about menus and navigation in future posts. If any particular topic in this area interests you, please feel free to say so in the comments.