DHTML Menu Builder Items
Groups

DHTML Menu Builder groups each menu item (or command) into Menu Groups.
You should think as menu groups as the pulldown menu it self.

A single project file must be used to store all the groups, because you can only call one .js file at a time. So if your page will display more than one pulldown menu, you must create, into the same project, one group for each menu. There's no limit on the number of groups a project file can have.

Each menu group can have its own particular properties such as background color, border width, etcetera.

To add a group to your project, press the F6 shortcut key or click the icon on the toolbar.

A new, blank group menu will be appended to the end of the project.
This is the time to type a name for the group. The name should be a reference name.
For example, if we want to create a menu which will contain items we sell, we could name this group SaleItems.
You should not use special characters such as double or single quotes, slashes, commas, spaces or any other character apart from letters and numbers.

Now that the new Group Menu has been created, you can start setting its properties.

The first property you should set is the trigger event. This will let you choose what event should the menu system listen for in order to display the pull down menu. The default event for every newly created group is By Hovering, that means that the menus will be displayed by just moving the mouse cursor over the hotspot.

This event will be captured by some item on your HTML document, known as hotspot. This item can be an image, a cell, a paragraph or any other HTML component that supports Java Scripting event capturing. The necessary code that must be added to these items is available in the hRef.txt file that is generated when you compile the project and is located in the same directory as the .js files.
As new feature in version 2.x, the Hot Spot Editor can attach this code for you!

These are all the events you can choose from:

Event

                          Result
Hovering The pulldown menu will be display when the mouse passes over the triggering or hotspot item.
Clicking The pulldown menu will be display when the user clicks the triggering or hotspot item.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer supports these events in almost any HTML tag. Netscape's Navigator version 4.x has many limitations. For example, paragraphs items <P> supports the Hovering event, but not the Clicking and the images support any of the three events. You should check Netscape's Developer site for more information on these kind of limitations. To avoid complications, always convert your hotspots into anchors. For example, if you whish to use an image as a hotspot, convert the image into a null hyperlink. Check the HotSpot Editor section for more information.

The rest of the properties can be accessed via the Style buttons

The Color properties of a menu group let you set the background color or image of the pulldown and whether if the group will have a border. In the case you set it to have borders, you can also choose the color of the light and dark borders of the surrounding frame.

Please note that the frame color setting has no effect when the menus are viewed using the Netscape Navigator browser.

The Font button will open the Menu Group's Font Property dialog. Even when Menu Groups do not display any text, it can be used to set the default text of the menu commands that will be created under this group.

The Leading buttons are used to increase or decrease the vertical spacing between the menu commands of the selected group.

And finally, the Special Effects button will let you set up some cool effects on your menus, such as drop shadow or transparency.

Some tips about the groups

You may have noticed that the properties of a group affect each menu command contained in the group at the time they're created. This means that setting the correct parameters for each group will save you a lot of time when adding the commands.

Usually, you'll want to have groups with the same properties, that is, groups that have the same colors, border settings and font types.

Once you have set the properties for the first group, you can copy its parameters and paste them into another group.

The copy and paste features of DHTML Menu Builder have been highly enhanced to accommodate the application needs. For more information you should take the tutorial where these features are explained in much more detail.