Creating a Layered Menu
Layered menus can provide greater flexibility in showing a button’s selected and activated
states, compared to standard overlay menus. In addition to the background image (which
may contain the buttons in their normal states), a layered menu has two separate layers
for each button (or three, if the button’s normal states are not part of the background).
For example, a menu with 12 buttons would need 24 layers just to show the selected
and activated states of each button, plus 12 more if their normal state is not part of the
background. (A Photoshop file can have up to 99 layers.)
There are several issues to be aware of when deciding whether to use layered menus:
• You cannot add an audio stream to them.
• You cannot include a full-motion video in them.
• When viewers make selections, they will notice a slower reaction time to button presses.
• Layered menus can also use overlays in the same way that standard menus do.