Now that we've modified our text menu, we are definitely feeling a little more confident with the hierarchical menu. We might want to show this off to the bosses, or we can make our titles jump off the page a little more before we start bragging. Now we can try out a simple graphical menu object referred to as GMENU in TYPO3. GMENU is our next step above TMENU in power and complexity, but it's still a pretty easy transition if we take a few minutes to understand the concepts.

Our graphical menu, GMENU, has the ability to use a TYPO3 class, GIFBUILDER, to create images on the fly. We are going to look at GIFBUILDER in depth in just a moment, but the basic idea is that GIFBUILDER can help us build complex graphics for our menus dynamically so that we can use fonts that are not be supported by all browsers, build button-like graphics, and use drop-shadows and embossing for effect. This means that we don't need to update Photoshop every time that we want to change the menu titles or replace the font, and we also don't have to learn or use Flash or JavaScript just to create flexible menu titles.

We gain a lot of freedom and power with GMENU, but it does have some disadvantages compared to TMENU. Depending on our needs, we will be generating an image for every state (normal, rollover, active, and so on), for each menu item anytime we make a change. The nice thing is that TYPO3 will cache our images, so they are only generated after we make a change and reset the cache. Overall, we will use the server a little more heavily anytime we reset the cache, and our users will need to download images for each menu item. The last disadvantage is just that it is more complex than TMENU. If our frontend developers or designers have already provided us with some awesome CSS/JavaScript or Photoshop images, then we may only need a text-based menu. In return for those possible disadvantages, we will get freedom and cross-browser compatibility, so let's see what we can do before we make any decisions.