2 submenus - Is that smart?

I'm just looking for people's point of view.

I have a DHTML menu and when you roll over the main point, theres a menu that drops down. On the menu that drops down, theres another menu that comes out from the side and that's where it ends.
Now a just received information to put in that has it narrowed down even more.

Is it a good idea to just keep on having sub-menu's or is that bad design? Is it too confusing for the end user?
Do you have suggestions on a better way of approaching this?

(this is for an online catalog.. I'm just narrowing down how many clicks the user has to go through before he/she see's products)

thanks

First off, this belongs in the JavaScript, CSS, HTML forum.

For one thing, I would just like to say that I despise those dumb menus no matter HOW many submenus they have... but, that's JMHO

I wouldn't allow more than one branch on it at a time. You get the main menu to drop down, and only allow one more level of menu to come off of it. After that, it's just way too complicated. Navigation should be easy. What good is it going to do a user on your site if they have to fight with 3 levels of menus? And what on earth could be so special about that site that you can't just put the top level navigation on the main page, then put sub-navigation within each following section? I just don't understand what the big fuss is with these stupid menus... they're ugly, they're confusing, and they're not necessary. Okay, my reccomendation just changed to ditch the whole menu!

No, seriously, if you MUST put a menu up, keep it to 2 levels only.

I hate submenus, in anything. It forces you to become familiar with the menu system, since you can't see all the options at once. Essentially, they only become useful to the regular visitors of a site and the power users. First time visitors, or casual browsers aren't likely to navigate through a maze of sub-menus to find the navigation command they want (assuming the nav commands are fairly intuitive...not always the case).

With submenus, you need to moueover each option to see what the suboptions are. Nested submenus are even worse. I also hate them because sometimes tracking the mouse over all those items is quite challenging, especially on computers with a poor mouse, or any type of laptop pointer device.

I'm not fond of menus, but I see the need for at least one layer of them on some sites. A well structured single layer menu is ok, since it doesn't take too much effort to see what's there. Multi-layered though...I hate...and not just in web pages.

From the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines 1.0:

Not to mention that you need a different script if it's either ie or ns or moz.

Don't add clutter like altavista did!