Does Google crawl JavaScript-based links?

I want to use drop down menus for the site I'm developing. As in, you hover your mouse over a category and a list of sub-categories is called through JavaScript. Will this affect SEs ability to crawl and index my site? Would a sitemap negate this entirely?

Thanks

 

well you can find some interesting answers and fats here on google: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=4b84d82c4fa87fd4&hl=en

 

Only if it thinks it is worth that effort. Google crawlers are now javascript capable, but they do not use it on each and every web page indexed.

 

Yes, google crawls Javascript, but it isn`t recommended

 

You are going to need to create a <noscript> section on each of your pages.

 

it is reported on many web sites that google crawl Java script links

 

Search engines can sometimes strugle with Java script. a good indication as to how the search engines will crawl your site is to disable Java script in your browser and see how it looks. if you can still see all your navigation then happy days, if not then maybe re-think your layout.

 

Good had officially announced that they are now crawling 'some' javascript links, it was unclear whether they considered these links as dofollow or nofollow.

 

A lot of suggestions here, and all of them indicate one thing, that, Do not doubt Google about executing javascript, but do not depend on google either in javascript links.