What is the simplest and best way to create a drop down menu for my navigation?
it will be a top navigation and when you hover over, you get 5-6 choices.
My first question would be: Do you really need one? Drop menus can be useful, but more often I think they are a sign of poor site design. Better to have a link to each main site section and then a sublist in each section, possibly in the sidebar. Don’t use dropdowns just because they seem cool or because everyone else has them (they don’t, actually), or because ‘this is a website, so something should move!’.
Anyhow, have you explored any online examples or tutorials? There are all kinds of menus out there. It would be better to say—‘I’ve tried this, but am having trouble with it …’
EDIT:
OK, I realize your question was about the best type of dropdown, so in answer to that, it’s a simple unordered list, with sub lists nested within list items. From there, you apply CSS as necessary, and there is better and worse CSS. You could take a look at Suckerfish menus, which are generally well regarded.
I didn’t really do any research. i was hoping for some type of framework that was alrady built out. have you ever used jquery superfish?
Actually, this updated version might be a better reference:
Son of Suckerfish Dropdowns | HTML Dog
There are also some useful links here:
i was wondering how ign.com creates their menu for navigation.
Plus when you click on the right most item in their navigation, the box is shifted to the left so it doesn’t go off screen.
The IGN dropdown is basically the same. It’s called a “mega menu”. Here is a tute on those:
{ visibility: inherit; } Pure CSS Mega Drop Down!
The positioning of the rightmost dropdown is just done with CSS. (The example above includes that.)