New, unique and exciting global navbar problem

[LordDoig]

Hi guys,

New to this forum, thanks for having me, and please accept my apologies that my first post is a solution request.

I'm building a website for my business - I wouldn't call myself a web developer but I certainly have more skills than the average bear and have produced a very professional looking site so far. I have created and perfected a navbar using HTML, CSS and an accordion javascript based on Scriptaculous and Prototype. I was including it globally through a simple SSI but the problem with this was that all the accordions would appear expanded until every other element of the page had loaded which gave a horrible flicker effect on fast-loading pages and a disastrous appearance on slow-loading pages.

All the elements of the navar are made using <h1> and <h2> tags for SEO.

The only solution I have found to this so far is to include the navbar as an iframe which, for appearances sake, is perfect but I know that it is a very bad move from an SEO perspective.

I have put off using a new accordion script from jQuery or Mootools as this one took me long enough to perfect and it is actually perfect when it's loaded.

My question is - is there a way to optimise the iframe use version for SEO? Is there an other form of SSI (php or something?) to include the global navbar but have it appear only when fully rendered? FYI my knowledge of PHP and JS is very limited but I'm quite a fast learner.

Also, should I have to stay with the iframe, can the damage be mitigated through the uploading of sitemap.xml to google? Or if I have a 'hidden' sitemap in each page (either in a drop down or completely hidden from view)?

Thanks so much in advance,

Sean