As some of you might know, I own a site which has a free download which is javascript & css based to render a nice menu. It's over at www.easymenu.co.uk if you want to have a look-see/download.

I bought this site from a friend who had it running without monetisation for quite some while. I added Adsense in strategic places, but saw very little income (as the sort of person to use the menu is "adsense blind")…I couldn't think of a different way to monetise it (in the usual way, eg a product sell), so decided to implement licensing…

Licensing

The actual menu code is free of charge, and is freell downloadable. If anyone uses it for personal use, all they need to "license" it is maintain a live backlink to the easy menu site - or they can pay a donation amount of their choice to purchase a "remove linkback" license. For webdesigners and corporate users, it's slightly different as I have a license for each which must be purchased.

I know there are a few webdesigners using the code without a license, but I cannot be bothered to chase them up - after all if they are willing to not spend $50 on a license, I highly suspect that they have little moral value. And I don't deal with people like that.

You want it for free??? What!

Sometimes, I get a request to use the Menu for free - and if the request is something close to my heart - like a charity or helpful site, then I always agree. Yesterday I received a very nice email;

I am personally very grateful that you agreed to let us remove the notice within the web page (it remains in the javascript, for anyone who would have enough understanding to get to it, because I feel indebted to you and obligated to protect your property). You may recall that I asked for a special exemption because we're forbidden to advertise, and we're a government agency serving people with disabilities … but I think we owe you far more than this look at the implementation, so I also enthusiastically recommend your menu to anyone who asks. I hope this gains you enough goodwill soon to make you some actual money!

I hope you like the style I applied to your menu. I need to spend some time whittling away some of the extra CSS code, but it is working well so I'm leaving it for now. EasyMenu is used only for the drop-down menu at the top of the page, but I also styled the side menu as an unordered list (without javascript) because it is both functional and semantically correct. Browsers with javascript disabled get an advisory message at the top of the page, as you'll see if you examine the code.

Most importantly, I must tell you that I have tested this with the Lynx text-only browser, with Window Eyes and JAWS screen readers, with Mozilla, Safari, Firefox, several versions of Internet Explorer, and with Opera, and the menu works flawlessly in all of them. Our blind users also assure us that they have no problems with this implementation. I used a "skip navigation" link as my first link on each of these pages, which allows screen readers to bypass the menu and go directly to the primary content. The side menu is the very next thing they encounter when they finish each page, and that essentially hands them the reins again to launch another page or to send us feedback on that one.

Your menu is one of the most important tools we have right now for making a good visual impression while assuring full access for everyone. It is without a doubt the best such solution I've seen, and I have looked EVERYWHERE!

Receiving an email such as this really is quite a shock - I think I've become far too cynical of people. Considering that the original request for the "free backlink removal" was well over 6 months ago, I had actually forgotten about it.