It is no wonder that SoThink’s DHTML Menu 8 is one of the most popular on the web. It truly has an extensively great set of interactive dropdown and rollover menus. It’s GUI is stylish and simple to understand and helps you to create cross browser compatibility in just a few clicks. One thing I really like is the templates included with this software. They did a good job at establishing menus with a demure color scheme which you can find to match just about any website. This is a real timesaver.

With this program you can add your menus locally or to a page already web based with no hand coding too. Menu builder is compliant with Dreamweaver, FrontPage, Expression Web and GoLive and creates a very useful widget in each of the programs.

One relieving aspect is that these menus are search-engine-friendly drop down web menus, and can be indexed by search engines, such as Google. Just one less thing to think about if you ask me. Here are a few of some of the great features in this great add-in program:
• I really like the new interface as it looks nice and helps the user through the menu build in a logical and clear fashion.
• Full Edit mode allows edits and previews to the menu directly in the preview window. This is a great feature which differs from many programs where swapping between preview mode and design space is typical.
• The new template section in this build is more organized, extensive and dare I say actually useful with a wealth of lovely already created menus.
• There is also a disable function that helps you disable sections or portions of the menu on the fly. I however have not had a chance to fully experience using this. But it seems like a neat feature to mention.
• Menu builder also supports switching to drop-down menus from tree-like menu by importing the authoring file (*.stm) of Sothink Tree Menu. So there is some cross program compatibility going on there.
• A cute feature is the “Tips of the Day” provides tips & tricks about using the program. Of course these can be turned on or off depending on your preference.
• Another beautiful feature is that MenuBuilder can encode in the an appropriate language pertinent to your website language.
• Finally this program is Supported by the W3C for producing Valid XHTML 1.0. Obviously a sensible and necessary feature.

I really like this program and what it does. For template menus you can’t go wrong with the ones SoThink offers. It is obvious that they put a lot of work into this new version and it will show on your WebPages. My only issue with these is that the menus are written in JavaScript rather than CSS which is gaining ground as the standard for menus. Granted some things are hard to accomplish with CSS in regards to expandable menus and typically you have to resort to JavaScript anyhow. So in the end you may want to go ahead and purchase this product and avoid the headache.