Unlike many menu vendors who still use the antiquated approach of placing redundant menu data on each web page in the form of nested li and div tags in order to provide search engine support, Visual Menu creates an XML Sitemap. Sitemaps are supported by all major search engines, incur no overhead, and are the only way of ensuring that content referenced by your menu is indexed by search engines.

Search Engine support is off by default in Visual Menu Maker. You can turn it on in the "Output Settings" step by setting the "Generate Sitemap " property in the "Search Engine Support" category to true. See the Configuring Search Engine Support section of the User's Guide for more information about Search Engine Support.

I get a "VisualMenu is undefined" or "VisualMenu is not defined" JavaScript error.

This happens when the Visual Menu Runtime Kernel script, vm-menu.js, which you must include in the <head> tag pair of the web page containing your menu, does not exist on your server, or more likely, exists on your server, but not at the location you think it does.

For testing purposes, specify the vm-menu.js file with an absolute URL like this:

<script src="http://mywebsite.com/visualmenu/vm-menu.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

If this doesn't work, enter the following into your browser's URL field:

http://mywebsite.com/visualmenu/vm-menu.js

...and press return.

If the browser gives an error message such as Page cannot be found, then the Kernel does not exist in the right location on your server.

This problem is often caused by confusion over the character case used for folder names. For example, users will sometimes name the target folder on their server VisualMenu, yet refer to this folder in their HTML as visualmenu. While this will work on a Windows® server, it will not work on servers such as Linux, because Linux treats VisualMenu and visualmenu as two separate directories.

If you are still having trouble, contact support, but make sure to provide the URL of the menu you're having trouble configuring, in order to cut down on response time.

My menu is not being updated when I upload my modified menu.

This is happening because you are uploading your menu files to a folder other than where your original menu files reside. You actually have two copies of the menu on your website now, yet you're still looking at the original copy.

I cannot see the page when I upload my modified menu.

This is happening because you are uploading your menu files to a folder other than where your original menu files reside. You probably have two copies of the menu on your website now, and you're looking at the wrong location.

Do you offer free upgrades?

Existing customers that have versions of Visual Menu Maker below 4.0 will need to purchase an upgrade. Customers who own versions 4.0 and above can upgrade freely. However, upgrading is not guaranteed by the terms of the license, and VisualMenu.com reserves the right to charge for upgrades.

See the User's Guide for upgrade instructions.

Do you offer free customer support?

We have always provided free support, 365 days a year, in the United States. We believe it is one of the primary advantages of buying Visual Menu, and what has enabled us to stay competitive with menu vendors in Eastern Europe, who offer much cheaper products. We have no plans to change our support policy. However, free support is not guaranteed by the terms of the license.

How do I get the "trial visual menu for evaluation use only" message to go away?

You must order the product. Once you have done so, see the User's Guide for registering the product.

If I purchase Visual Menu, will the product ever expire?

No. It will never expire.

How do I configure multiple menus on the same page?

See the Configuring Multiple Menus On the Same Page section of the User's Guide. If you still are having trouble, contact support, but make sure to provide an example of the particular problem you're having in order to cut down on response time.

I can't find documentation on how to deploy my menu to a website.

The instructions for doing this are in the "Deploy Your Menu" step. However, the instructions in the "Deploy Your Menu" step depend on what option you selected in the previous step — "Publish Options". You probably have the "Create a test menu. (THIS MENU SHOULD NOT BE PLACED ON A SERVER)" option selected in the "Publish Options" step. To get instructions for deploying your menu to a website, go to the "Publish Options" step and select "Manually upload menu files to your website or copy menu files to your local server."

Why isn't the On Click property working?

You're probably doing one of two things wrong:

  1. You're treating Visual Menu as if it generates HTML event handler markup, which it doesn't. For example, you're doing something like this:

    onclick="myFunction('foo')"

    You should enter only a JavaScript function call, and it should not be followed by a semi-colon or any other character.

    Here is an example of the correct way to enter a JavaScript function into the "On Click" property:

    myFunction('foo')

  2. You're attempting to test a function that hasn't been defined yet. For example, if you enter the function myFunction('foo') into the "On Click" property of a menu element, and then attempt to click on the menu element within Visual Menu Maker, to test to see if the myFunction('foo') call works, it will cause a JavaScript error! This is because the myFunction JavaScript function hasn't been defined yet. You must first generate the menu, then add the source code for the myFunction JavaScript function. Then you can test it.

How do I get form elements to stop overlapping Sub Menus in older versions of Internet Explorer?

In the "Menu Settings" step of Visual Menu Maker, set the "Overlap Hack" property to true. Note that this is not supported by Sub Menus with rounded corners.

How do I get Adobe Flash® Player objects to stop overlapping Sub Menus?

See the Adobe Flash® Player Compatibility section of the User's Guide. Here is a full example of Adobe Flash® Player integration with Visual Menu.

Does the Visual Menu script contact any outside servers?

Absolutely not! VisualMenu.com does not engage in any type of sneaky, underhanded business practices! We also have a very strict privacy policy.

How do I center menu text?

In the "Menu Appearance" step of Visual Menu Maker, scroll down until you see the "Text Alignment" property, in the "Menu Element" category. Set the "Text Alignment" property to "center".

How do I center a menu?

Here is a cross-browser solution that works with both HTML and XHTML DTDs.

<table>
<tr>
   <td style="width:50%"></td>
   <td>
      <div id="id_vm"></div>
      <script type="text/javascript">new VisualMenu("id_vm", _VM_DATA)</script>
   </td>
   <td style="width:50%"></td>
</tr>
</table>

I can't get the menu centered within a centered block in Opera.

The example below centers the main menu within a 500 pixel, yellow block that is centered within the page. This example works in Opera versions 9.0 and above, and all other browsers that we support:

<div style="text-align: center">
   <div style="background:yellow; width:500px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto">
   <p>I am centered text</p>
   <table>
   <tr>
      <td style="width:50%"></td>
      <td>
         <div id="id_vm"></div>
         <script type="text/javascript">new VisualMenu("id_vm", _VM_DATA)</script>
      </td>
      <td style="width:50%"></td>
   </tr>
   </table>
   </div>
</div>

I can't get the sub menu to line up with the main menu in Firefox. Here is a screenshot of what this looks like:

Menu not lining up

Most likely this is because you're attempting to place a static (default positioned menu), in an absolute positioned container. For example, you're probably trying to do something like this:

<div style="position: absolute; top: 50px; left: 50px">
   <div id="id_vm"></div>
   <script type="text/javascript">new VisualMenu("id_vm", _VM_DATA)</script>   
</div>

The Menu Container in the above example has its id attribute set to "id_vm". The Menu Container uses static positioning, yet it's placed in a container with absolute positioning. This is not allowed. static positioned menus must be placed in static positioned containers. To make the above example work correctly across all browsers, absolute positioning should be applied directly to the Menu Container. Because the Menu Container uses absolute positioning, there's no need to place it within a container. Here's an example:

<div style="position: absolute; top: 50px; left: 50px">
</div>

<div id="id_vm" style="position:absolute; left:50px; top:50px"></div>
<script type="text/javascript">new VisualMenu("id_vm", _VM_DATA)</script>   

How do I get Visual Menu to work with FrontPage® Shared Borders?

Place all the Visual Menu JavaScript relevant code within the Shared Border. For example:

<div id="id_vm"></div>
<script src="vm-data.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="vm-menu.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">new VisualMenu("id_vm", _VM_DATA)</script>

You still need to include Visual Menu's stylesheet file, vm-style.css. Since this must be placed in the <head> section of the document, which is not supported by Shared Borders, you must either manually place this in the <head> section of each document or, if you already are including a global stylesheet in each document, you can include the Visual Menu stylesheet within your global stylesheet via the CSS import statement. For example:

@import "/visualmenu/vm-style.css";

Does Visual Menu require the Microsoft .NET Framework in order to run?

No. Visual Menu runs in any platform. What requires the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 in order to run is Visual Menu Maker. Visual Menu Maker only generates menus. It has nothing to do with the operation of the menu and does not have to be installed on a user's system to run the generated menu.

Multiple spaces aren't showing up in menu element text.

This is because multiple space characters are ignored in HTML. To force multiple spaces to show up, don't use the standard space character. Instead, use the character entity reference for a non-breaking space: &nbsp;

For example, this will force 3 spaces between the words "The" and "dog":

The&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;dog

Does Visual Menu have Right to Left language support?

No. Not at this time. Accordingly, you should not use Visual Menu if you intend to create menus in Arabic, Hebrew, or Urdu, as these languages are written from right to left.

Does Visual Menu add Section 508 compliance code?

No. Visual Menu does not add Section 508 compliance code at this time. Many menu vendors who assert that they support Section 508 do not fulfill all of the requirements of the specification. If you need Section 508 compliance code added to your menu, make sure that the web page containing the menu passes a Section 508 compliance validation check.

If Visual Menu has such great features, why isn't it the sales leader?

While some menu vendors boast to have the most sales, these statement are unsubstantiated. It is not possible to verify worldwide web menu sales because the vast majority of menu vendors are privately owned and none of them disclose their sales records.