A set of 9 sub-domains have been created with the goal of speeding up the delivery of the various menu images around the site.

All images are cached on the server and depending on which type of image is requested, it will be delivered by the appropriate sub-domain.

This is a part of CSS Menu Builders attempt in following the best practice rules set forth in an article on the same subject by Yahoo, a link is provided below.

In the future it would be cool to add all the static menu images to one file, as this would drastically decrease the requests made by the site, but there is still some way to go, before this is even attempted.

Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Web Site

Note:
Headers are set for the images, so the first time, it might take a little time to load, but then they should be cached in your browsers as well. Headers are set for 1 week and then they should revalidate.

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.

Well it looks like I will not be able to add any new features to the menu builders, before I go back home to visit friends, so therefore I writing this post, to let you know what the future feature plans for CMB are.

• Vista/Apple menu builder
• More options for horizontal menu builder
• Direct menu linking
• Export features
• Multi level menu builder
• Site performance improvements

Below you can read a description of each of the features and if you feel like it, vote which should be done first.

Read the rest »

Language support has been added to the css menu builder pages.

Currently only English and Danish are supported, but I expect to add Portuguese, French and Spanish during the weekend. More languages might be added as I find trusted translators.

The language selector uses a cookie to remember the language, this cookie is set for 365 days.

For those users that do not allow cookies, the translation of the builder page can be obtained directly by adding a language code to the query string (?l=xx, where xx is the language code), should the chosen language code not be supported, the page will fall back to the default language which is English.

Though I have tried to make the menu builders as user friendly as possible, I hope this will help those users that do not understand all the terms on each builder page.

Ohh yeah, and should you find a term that you do not find is suited, then please send me an email or add a comment below, arguing why your suggested term is better suited.

Please note that when you change language, the page reloads and the menu you are working on will be lost, so please choose your language before initiating the menu building process.

Update Sep 10th, 2008: Portuguese language has been added to the menu builders. Though I had hoped to add French and Spanish as well, I have still not received these translations. I will update this post, as soon as these have been implemented.