Project Goals

Our basic goal is simple: to create a multilevel menu system using nothing more than some unordered lists and CSS. Embedded within that overall goal are a number of more specific goals:

• The menu system we create needs to be able to handle multiple levels of drop-downs so that we can have menus spawn from menus.

• It should be easy to set up our menus as either sidebars or horizontal toolbars. This should also be possible without changing the markup at all.

• If we can avoid using JavaScript, we will. In other words, we want to have the menus dynamically shown and hidden via CSS alone. Doing so will reduce page load since the browser will only have to load the page and the style sheet.

• The menus need to work in as many browsers as possible, and that includes IE/Win.

It might sound like we have our work cut out for us, but the whole process will be simpler than you might believe right now. Most of what we have to do is lay out the menus how we want. Once that's done, we'll just add in a few extra bits to make the menus appear and disappear dynamically, and we'll be good to go!