Navigating Your Web Site with XML
By Michael Floyd
One of the more common features of high-content sites these days seems to be the navigation bar found on the left-hand side of the screen. Usually placed in a table, this navigation bar is often a long laundry list of what's on the site. The problem with this approach is that you must hunt through the list to find what you're looking for. And because the navigation bar is contained within a table, it scrolls off the screen. If the list is long, you may find yourself scrolling back and forth to find what you're looking for.
In creating the plumbing for my site, www.Beyond HTML.com, I wanted to design a more structured approach to navigation using drop-down lists. The idea was to present a list of the Web site's main topics in the navigation bar. When you click on a topic, a list of subtopics or articles drops down, and clicking a second time on the topic folds, or closes, the drop-down list. I also wanted to use frames to present a consistent navigation bar that didn't scroll off the screen. Finally, I needed to provide an alternative table-based approach for older browsers that don't support frames.
My first attempt was to create a series of HTML files, each representing a different point in the navigation process. While this approach worked well, it resulted in a dozen or so navigation files. My problem was compounded by the desire to support both frames and tables. This meant that the number of files easily doubled since each file contained two implementations of the same menu.
