Menu and submenu

[Chris]

This one gives me a headache for a long time.
I have left vertical menu (main menu). Then on some pages I have horizontal menu (submenu). Both menus require each item to have 2 states (+mouseover but that's not important): normal state and selected page state (indicating that the page /subpage has been selected and is active). Also some menu items require notification element (like "!" displayed so it notify player that he should click it because there is something important/new right now).

On the attached sceen is the most degenerated case, when there are several olines of the horizontal submenu (on most cases there is only 1 line). Generally, I feel the whole submenu is too big but I don't know how to make it better.

How the submenu should look like? (this is an eastetic/functionality question)

[CygnusX]

For starters, I think you need a different colored background for the sub menu items.  I would think you'd want to separate the look a little from the normal menu elements.  Start there and see where it goes.

[SpaceDoG]

You could probably shrink the sub menu by making a tree on the main menu under mail. Just add a New, Inbox, Sent on the left under message...

[Chris]

OK, did some thinking:

1) I definitely want horizontal menu, it simply feels like "select subpage" the most.
2) I think I will have to resign from buttons being strethed to fit the whole width of the page. Especially since sometimes there might be only one button, which looks very ugly then.

The best I could think of is a separate box with centred plain text links... Not thrilled about that one through (probably will look ugly)...