DynarchMenu The Coolest DHTML / JavaScript Menu and Toolbar

Why DynarchMenu?

There are so many DHTML menus on the market that, before anything else, we had to answer a difficult question: “should we build one ourselves or not”? The answer was positive because we aimed for some features that no other menu seems to have.

We wanted to have keyboard navigation. We wanted to write the menu in plain HTML, in order to save us time and stress: this way we don't need to treat differently SE bots or non-JavaScript browsers.

We wanted to create a menu with automatic layout. Yes, we don't like to specify the exact width for each submenu or menu item. The only way to make it truly independent of font families and sizes is to let the browser do it.

We wanted to have a menu that can behave like desktop-based menus. Most DHTML menus out there will instantly open a popup menu when you hover an item! Some people like this, so we do have it as an option, but our menu can also behave like a desktop-based menu--open at click.

We wanted to make it as dynamic as possible: one should be able to change the menu icons at runtime (this is useful for checkboxes), or change menu items text, or even disable items. Also, we thought that a good menu should make it very easy for developers to create context menus.

We wanted CSS! All menus nowadays seem to use CSS, but not to the best of its power. Our menu can be heavily customized by CSS in a manner which is totally independent of font sizes, system resolution or browser. And we provided some really professional skins.

Last but not least, we wanted to create the perfect looking menu! All icons are centered. Separators are placed in the right position and have the right thickness. Text labels are vertically centered. These may seem trivial but they do make an application look professional.

These are few of the reasons that convinced us to create a new DHTML menu. It wasn't easy--believe it or not, our menu was under heavy development for almost 6 months! The core code was factored several times and lots of bugs were identified and ironed out such that we are proud to have virtually the best DHTML menu out there.