Essay of My Wonderful Life, Drop down menu

Four and a half years have passed since I started my website. I have tried to keep something new on my website through changing the cover photographs time to time. Also I arranged six icons around the cover photographs, which have the linkage to each of corners such as the video gallery, the photo gallery and the collection of essays of my website. This was the established style of the top page of my website. I had kept this style without changing so much, since I started my website.

However, I noticed that this design of the top page of my website was suitable for the screen of the notebook computer of a conventional type like 15 inches from 12 inches, but was not suitable for the desktop personal computer with a big screen of 17 inches or more. The main reason is that the cover photograph was too small for the screen. So I decided to make the size of the cover photograph from 500 x 375 to 640 x 480. This made the impression of my website better. However if I would do so, the icons, which were arranged in surroundings of the cover photographs, would lose a balance in the top page. I began to think how I should do.

At first I was thinking to make use of the frame technology. However most of my homepage that so far I had made up should be seen in full screen. So the frame technology was not always suitable for my homepages. As the next step, I thought of the drop down menu, which should be put at the first line of my website and made us easily to open other pages. Possibly the menu software should create more than three stratum. In another words, it should not only child's items but also grand-child's items. It would be easier or me to buy the products of business. But I would be not so satisfied. Then I started to research Internet.

I retrieved the words of "drop down menu" or "pull-down menu". I found some free software of the drop down menu. But they had not the stratum of three stages and seemed to be troublesome for me to maintain the menu. I retrieved the same words of the world. Surprisingly I hit 820,000 pages. After I checked some of them I found suitable software among them.

It was free software authored by Mr. Evgeny Novikov. Judging from his address and name, he seems to be a Russian. It is a drop down menu that can be put in our website. It has three stratum or more. It seemed to be easily to maintain the data of menu. It was an ideal menu. Only one thing that made me worried was that it might be impossible for us to use it in the circumstances in Japanese. However I should not worry about it. I could make use of Japanese language in this menu. Also I could even use of a Japanese fonts. I decided to adopt this menu. However at the last moment, I was wondering whether there was a virus or not. I checked the source. It was all right. There was no virus. Finally I put this new menu into my homepage.

As soon as I started my homepage, my mouse's pointer happened to touch the new drop down menu. The menu immediately showed the link. I clicked it and it connected to the designated page. I was successful. Frankly speaking I didn't expect that I could succeed it so easily. This was the episode why I changed the design of my top page. The new style is as below;

(1) The first line --- The new drop down menu
(2) The cover photograph of bigger size
(3) The symbol line of my homepage
(4) A mascot of animation gif
(5) The counter

I think that the new design is more simple and easier to handle than the former design. The appearance should be more professional than before. I am happy to think like this and changed the index pages of video gallery, photo gallery and essay, using this new drop down menu. All of them have been improved a lot, I am sure. In another words, it is no more amateur level, but a professional level.

All of these improvements have come from the favor of Mr. Evgeny Novikov, who might be a Russian. I would like to appreciate him. We want to express our gratitude. Anyway before Internet started, I did not think that I was personally indebted to the Russian. It might be an event only of the days of the Internet.

( April 29, 2005 )