Category/Sub Listing Question

[dustbuster]

I'm building a navigation system using lists (<ul>). All the categories and subcategories are being pulled from a MySQL database.

It looks like

Category 1
- Subcategory
- Element 1
Category 2
Category 3

When you click on a category it expands and shows the subcategories and so on. I am using CSS and Javascript to expand and contract the menu so it is possible that only 1 Category's data can be displayed at a time or all could be displayed at once.

My questions:
Should I a) make it so that when the user clicks on a category the script grabs the data for that category only? Or b) should I make it so that all Categories and their elements are retrieved?

I want this to be a flexible system so I can have unlimited elements if I wanted. I am concerned with the amount of time using (b) would need to retrieve and display the data.

I would also like to avoid refreshing the page because as a user I find it annoying (when I want to expand a list to see only one element).

If you have any ideas I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks
D

[barand]

I think you answered your own question

I would also like to avoid refreshing the page because as a user I find it annoying (when I want to expand a list to see only one element).

In this case, go with (b) the time diff between getting for 1 category and all is probably a couple of millisecs.

[dustbuster]

Thanks for the input.