how to get a navigation bar like this...

Hi,

If you go to www.Play.com and look at the way their navigation system works, you can see that when you click on another button such as 'Electronics', the navigation buttons next to it do not reload when the page is refreshed to go to the 'Electronics' page. Only the 'Electronics' button and whatever is underneath reloads. This allows the page to load quicker because most of the buttons do not need to reload.

Could someone please tell me what this method is called and what software allows me to do this? ImageReady?

Thanks for your help.

 

Just looks like a normal tab driven menu to me. Maybe your browser is only loading the bits it needs to?

 

is it possible that maybe there is some javascript or something which tells the site not to reload the rest of the buttons?

 

it is possible, but it's not happening with this site... thats perfectly normal links on that menu, you can see by the fact that when you click on something, the address bar changes to a different page, tellin you that it has been reloaded

 

Those graphics do refresh with the rest of the page. Once they have been downloaded, however, the browser saves them in cache, or "Temporary Internet Files".

 

Looks like there are just graphics nothing of coding, each tab has its own graph and html page.

Hope this help.

 

Although that page does not use it, what you are looking for is called AJAX. It allows you to refresh or load only certain parts and when done properly it can save a lot of resources in your server.

 

You can use php to load new sections of a page without reloading the navigation. Using stricly php you only have 1 url, which is not great for seo so you should assign some variables with sections and do some mod rewrite to change the displayed urls. You can also use java to do this, and ajax, which is xml and java mixed.

 

I took a look at the site, and it certainly could do with some cleanup. Looking at a validator gave 294 errors. Eeeeek!

Are you SURE you want to copy these guys?

 

wow very nice navigation bar