Summary

There are many types of menu systems that you can make to provide users with a means of navigating your Flash site. In this chapter, you looked at just a few. You can create menus that are very simple, such as the pop-up menu, or you can create complex dynamic menu systems using ActionScript and Generator.

Remember that the type of site you're creating is going to dictate your menu system. Is your site going to be relatively static, without major changes to the basic categories? If so, a non “data-driven solution might be fine for you. Is your site going to expand frequently? Do you expect your menu items to change often? If so, you will want to consider a data-driven approach to creating your menus. What are your space considerations? If you have limited space, but a lot of information to display, collapsible or scrolling menu systems can be appropriate solutions. If you're starting out with only a small amount of information, but expect to grow, the scrolling menu is an interesting approach. It enables you the space to expand, while giving the illusion of a deeper site than what currently exists.

Whatever you do, don't limit yourself to copying the examples you see here. Rectangles are functional, but boring; stretch yourself. As you work your way through the rest of this section of the book, you'll get exposure to more dynamic approaches to retrieving information from both external data sources and your Library. Be thinking about how you could retrieve different movie clips for each menu item, as opposed to the plain-Jane clips you've been using here. Movie clips are objects in Flash 5; that means you have a lot of control over their behavior and appearance. Think about ways in which you could dynamically select or set properties for movie clips from your menu. Your only limit is your imagination !

So, you have a killer menu system. In the next chapter, you take a look at how you can use a preloading sequence to make sure all your content is loaded before your menu appears.