I am trying to use a vertical cascading menu for a site (on master page) which uses the sitemap XML file. It works Ok, has two level node depth (about 8 primary level choices) and total XML file has about 190 entries (page links). There are a few performance problems and wondered if anybody had any experience of using a menu this size of XML.

(i) Does not seem to work when viewed from computer with IE5.0; displays text and levels but no links. Is there any work around for this which I presume is a problem with the version of JavaScript that IE5 is running.

(ii)Viewed on a modern machine with good power ( Intranet via 100mb internal LAN) - it works OK but on anything older (e.g. pre 2001) it works but there is a real lag between the hover over and the display of the next menu or item. Is this just a processor performance for the JavaScript which on the source view for the page looks huge. Is there any way to make the system work with moderate performance machines with what does not seem a huge site - about 200 pages?

(iii) Are 200 entries too many for a site map?

many thanks for any ideas or suggestions

Paul

Sheffield UK

(i) This is a known issue.  IE5 is a "downlevel" browser.  See some of my tips here: http://weblogs.asp.net/dannychen/archive/2005/11/21/431121.aspx

(ii) The Menu javascript performance has a lot to do with the performance of the javascript VM on the target machine.  We've taken some steps to improve the performance of the javascript over the course of develping the product.  That said, the # of items in the menu has a lot to due with it's performance, there is not much a user can do to 'tune' this.

(iii) Up to you :)

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Danny