CSS Menus - 5 Key Ingredients

CSS menus offer a greatly expanded range of creative options to site designers. But the benefits to using CSS menus only begins with more expansive design flexibility. There are numerous additional benefits to using CSS menu-based navigation - benefits that will save you time and money in the development and management of all of your client sites.

5 Ingredients for an ideal CSS Menu

Because CSS design separates design elements from site text, changes to the look of a site can be made by swapping out one CSS template for another without changing the text. In addition:

1. CSS Menus better be Recyclable. A CSS menu is a template. Once created it can be used over and over, amortizing development costs with each site you design and build.

With a file folder full of CSS templates, you can adapt existing design elements, give them a different look and employ them on another site without any re-coding. Consider how much that will cut down on site development time and expense.

2. CSS Menus need to be Easily Customizable. Pick and click saves hours of expensive hand-coding. Client requested re-dos can be completed in minutes instead of hours. Change the background color, change the type font, the size whatever the request, fixes are fast using CSS Menus.

And, as you build your client base, expect satisfied clients to come back for updates and upgrades to their sites. These updates are simple and cost effective. They also deliver great margins on work for hire assignments.

3. CSS Menus Must be 100% SEO friendly. That makes site navigation readable to bots and menu text is given high priority in search engine algorithms. Sites show up faster in SE indices when CSS complaint menu technology is deployed.

4. CSS Menus should be Section 508 Compliant. Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 requires equal access to all non-classified information. There are also state regulations used by schools, public institutions, corporations, even restaurants and movie theaters.

5. CSS horizontal and CSS vertical flyouts and dropdown menus should be easily changeable for those with low vision, increasing font size and even background colors for easier accessibility. CSS menus are strongly advocated by the W3C in their site compliance rankings.

One other point. There's an active, robust support community for CSS menu design and development. This means there's plenty of access to good, reliable information from professionals who have already discovered the money-saving, money-making benefits of CSS menu modules.