March 21, 2008

Tree Menu Making Software

In last week’s show we talked about how drop down and fly out menus suck because it takes such a steady hand to get through the navigation. I currently use a program from Xara. It turns out they have software, and a ton of online tools you can use (but no expandable/tree menu software )So I went looking for a menu system that would stay open untill I closed it. Some call this tree menus, or expandable menus. Here is what I found.

Emenu Tree
http://www.emenutree.com/
This site and its software look like they were designed in 1991. No thanks.

Tree View
http://www.treeview.net/
$29 and a very nice site with good examples of how it works.

Cool JSTree
http://javascript.cooldev.com/scripts/cooltree/
$49 This looks to be a very flexible and easy to use software. One of the front runners.

Soft Complex Tigra Menu Pro
http://www.softcomplex.com/order.html
$29. This site seemed ok untill I went to llok at the price. It seemed liek they had so many option that I had a hard time finding out how much this software is, and what is a configuration service? Is your software so hard I need this?

CSS Tree Menu
http://www.pluginlab.com/dreamweaver-extensions.asp
This site is great looking, and if you are using Dreamweaver they have a ton of stuff (some of it free). It’s 79 for their product, but I’m seriously considering it.

Tree Menu Magic
http://www.projectseven.com/products/menusystems/tmm/index.htm
$90 This was alot like the previous Dreamweaver plugin site only more expensive.

NEW NETWORKING TOOLS

Entrecard.com is a networking tool where you upload a 125X125 jpg file into the system and you can “Drop” your card on blogs and people. The more people drop cards at your site the more you can earn. You can even sell credits (um, ok I don’t know about that), but it is easy to transfer your credits to another person. It looks interesting. See my entrecard in my sidebar >>>>>

NEW SEARCH ENGINE IN BETA “Search Me”
This new search engine provides results as a graphic. Interesting, and it makes my previous points that the first impression of your site should be a good one. Check out the video at www.searchme.com