The Benefits of UDM 4

With UDM 4 you can have the best of all worlds - rich and beautiful designs, graceful and easy-to-use menus, and proper accessibility to all your visitors, however they access the web.

The Benefits to Users

Ultimate Dropdown menu is easy and intuitive for your visitors, overcoming many of the usability and access problems traditionally associated with DHTML menus. Check out some of these benefits:

Accessible to everyone
The menu structure is based on simple HTML so that all browsers get something they can use.
Easy to use
Menus have synchronised open and close timers, so mouse-movements don't have to be precise. For people who don't or can't use a mouse, the navbar and menus support keyboard navigation.
Always visible
The menus can automatically reposition themselves to stay inside the viewport. A horizontal navbar can even collapse into multiple rows as the window width decreases.
Always readable
The entire structure is flexible to text size.
All the links are real links
You can give them any valid attributes, context menus are preserved, and they can have visited/unvisited styles.
Quick loading
Depending on the options you choose, the total filesize can be as low as 20K!
Degrades gracefully
Excellent separation of content and presentation means that UDM degrades smoothly, from full dynamic menus all the way back to plain-text links.
Standards compliant
Ultimate Dropdown Menu is valid HTML 4 and XHTML 1.1, and in our judgement, meets the criteria for WAI Triple-A and Section 508 conformance.

The Benefits to You

Ultimate Dropdown Menu is quick and easy to implement, however your site is built, and however you maintain it. Free of the worries of compatibility, encapsulation and the negative impact of bulky scripting, UDM leaves you more time to get on with your job - because nobody ever got fired for delivering on time.

Easy implementation
UDM can easily integrate into static or dynamic websites, without you having to know any advanced javascript. We can also customise the menu for you.
Easy maintenance
Even less knowledge is required to maintain UDM - anyone with minimal HTML skills can update the menus and links.
Visible to search engines
UDM is visible to search-engine spiders and other web robots.
All the links are real links
They generate click-through information in statistical packages, and they're included in server processes such as transient session handling.
Well supported
Technical support and advice is available to all commercially licensed users.
Flexible layout
UDM can be a vertical side menu, a horizontal dropdown menu, an expanding/contracting menu, or provide popup menus from any other page element. It can be configured to work onmouseover or onclick, or a mixture of both.
Rich design palette
A sophisticated range of style options give you maximum control over the menu's appearance. Every link and menu can be unique, or a single design scheme can apply to the whole thing.
Fully extensible
UDM has an integrated API which you can use to program new extensions, or tie other scripting into link and menu events.
Well encapsulated
Most of the code is object-oriented, to give the best chance of compatibility with other scripting. Existing events are unaffected, including <body onload>.
Well maintained
The UDM series has been continually developed and maintained for more than four years - in past releases we were among the first to support Netscape 6, Opera 5 and Konqueror 2; we supported IE6, Safari and Opera 7 when they were still beta releases. You can be confident that UDM will stay with the leading-edge of browser technology.
Cutting-edge
Fully-featured and accessible - UDM sets a new standard for professional DHTML menus. It even works within XHTML served as XML!


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UDM 4 is valid XHTML, and in our judgement, meets the criteria for WAI Triple-A conformance.

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