Appearance templates allow you to apply a different look and feel to your menu in one click. You can do this at any time by coming back to this screen.

The two options at the bottom of the screen allow you to select what will be applied from the template - in almost all cases you will want to apply both the button settings and project settings to your menu.

Appearance templates will affect all settings which impact the way your button looks (including some button effects) - they will not affect any menu effects (show child buttons and hide child buttons).

Tip: Try re-applying various templates after you have Defined your buttons in Step 3. This will show you exactly how your menu will look.

Menu Effects templates give you the ability to see how your menu will look with a variety of different menu expansion/contraction animations in one click. You can do this at any time by coming back to this screen.

Menu Effects templates only affect the Show Child Buttons and Hide Child Buttons settings.

Note: You can change any of the animation speeds in the Design stage - just adjust the Show Child Buttons and Hide Child Buttons settings in the Button Affects dialog.

TIP: Some menu effects will only show one child section at a time - this reduces the overall height requirement for the flash or java menu. 1 Cool Menu FX Tool will not automatically reduce the project size for you. If you want a small applet or flash file, simply note how much vertical space your project requires when previewing and reduce the project's height from within the Design stage - this will make your project run faster and be more managable in your page.

Templates are simply pre-configured menu settings which are applied to a menu. Anything you see in a template can be done manually from within the Design stage. You can create your own templates very easily - this can be a great way to maintain a menu system on a constantly changing site.

Appearance Templates:
Templates are just 1 Cool Menu FX Tool projects and can contain anywhere from one to many buttons. The template is applied by repeating the settings for each button at the same level. For instance, if you have a blue button as the top-level button in a menu and an orange button as its child the template it will apply the blue button to all top-level buttons and the orange to all child buttons.

Sequences:
Appearance templates can also contain sequences. For instance, if you have a template with one blue and one green parent button, both with orange child buttons the template will alternative between blue and green parents.

Using this simple approach you can create amazing templates - keep in mind that spacing, colour, button effect are all applied.

Menu Effects Templates:
These work just the same as Appearance templates except that they only apply the Show Child Buttons and Hide Child Buttons settings.

TIP: Load some of the templates included with 1 Cool Menu FX Tool as projects to see how they work.