After a long absence I have come back to build a new version of the CSS Menu Builder page, you might not notice that many design changes, but on the menu builder pages things have changed a bit.

In a time where many have focus on performance, I decided to do the same, granted there are still a few issues that need to be fixed to comply with more points on the Yahoo best practice list, but they will come.

Here is a list with a few of the performance enhancements that have been added.

• CSS and Javascript minification.
• CSS and Javascipt caching.
• Javascript code reduction.
• Image caching.
• File size reduction.

Here is a list of new features added to the new CSS Menu Builder structure.

• Builder broken up into multiple segments to increase performance and usability.
• Fixed Zip file download errors in Safari under OS X and IE 8 under Windows.
• Added link builder to create links for your menus, they support drag & drop for positioning.
• Uses cookies to remember you last menu, next time you come back (Cookie is saved for 1 year).
• Breadcrumb menu now has built-in support for Breadcrumb NavXT WordPress plugin, by removing the span tag within the anchor tag.

Future features, without promising to much, as happened last time I wrote a post looking at the future.

• Javascript, css and image files will be distributed on sub-domains to increase performance, using browsers multiple domain request features as described in Yahoo’s best practices for speeding up websites.
• Better image caching on the various sub-domains.
• Horizontal Menu Zip file and Breadcrumb Menu Zip file will include templates for WP Menubar and Breadcrumb NavXT WordPress plugins.
• All images will have alpha transparent background, so that you may remove the background image from the css and allow for seamless integration into your designs, where it is not possible to build a menu background.
• Menu Image generator scripts will all be updated to use the new Builder Class, which should increase performance and future maintenance.

I hope that people will like these enhancements and will continue to use CSS Menu Builder in the future.