There is no doubt there are many ways to manage a scenario where the designer wants to create working drop-down menus. Where the drop-down menu has numerous links, the classic vertical down-down can be cumbersome to view and manage. Here is one example where a drop-down menu tabs can be a page in its own right. This allows the designer to have any number of links placed on the menu, without the need to replicate a myriad of pop-ups on each page:

https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/simpleHeader/index.htm. The upside here is that one can create a transition to a mobile variant without too much effort.

Where though, a designer wants to create a classic drop-down menu, there are again lots of variations that can be deployed - this is an example where each drop-down menu is a pop-up, but it needs to be repeated on each page: https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/submenu/. The alternative to repeating a sub-menu on each page, would be a modification of Acorn's solution for having a pop-up on one page that is accessible from other pages - a Gary P request that I modified to use a simple button (text and shape soft-grouped), rather than the Xara Navbar : https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/common-layer/index.html. [ Without the Navbar it might be possible to simplify the code].

In taking a fresh look at all this, I discovered the Xara bug we identified many years ago is still there! Create any shape, add a text line centered, copy to the MouseOver layer, modify and soft-group. Add a link and preview - the MouseOver elements shift to the right! Yes, it may only happen when you have Scale-to-fit-Width, but it can catch you out for sure. Age-old solution here, left-justify the text and manually centre:

Working example using MouseOff, MouseOver and MouseDown: https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/pagemenu/

The corollary to the latter example is that I have frequently been asked to match the menu behavior of a desktop variant and mobile variant, whereby the visitor can see from the menu what page they are on; a designer can achieve this on the desktop by having a MouseOver and MouseDown state that are the same; the mobile will show a MouseOver link (in a menu) until another link is executed.

Several real world examples: https://theparsonage.co.uk/ and https://initiostar.co.uk/. Also worth a look at a CSS idea (thanks to Acorn) https://initiostar.co.uk/demo/jq-menu/

Trust this helps to get the ideas flowing.