I've read a lot of posts in the forums here on boonex.com regarding the complexity of Dolphin's drop down menus. I've read a lot of posts complaining that navigation is too complex, and that Dolphin sites are hard to understand. I don't think that's all true, but I've been looking at Dolphin sites for four years now. On one site I am developing, I have decided to use full width drop down menus. Each drop down will have three separate content divs to display html content that relates to the menu items. It will be basic info to describe what the user can expect to find in each section of the site, what they can do there. All this content will be inserted via languages keys that are automatically generated by a modified menu system. The idea is to give the user a quick overview of the entire site, from any page on the site, without taking up any permanent page space.
Below is a screen shot.
This is only an experiment, to see if it improves the first impression of the site in regards to navigation and site complexity. This did not require any changes to source files.... it's all done in the custom template. I also realize that once a user gets experience using the site, full width menus may just get in the way. For those users, I'll let them switch to a simpler version of the menu... probably just a two column drop menu.
*Please note that I did not post this in an attempt to advertise anything, sell anything, or promote anything. I posted this in response to Caltrade's post regarding engaging users, because I believe this concept relates in a general way. I created this separate post only because I could not attach a screen shot to a reply.