I have a design logic question for everyone.

I'm designing a 3 tier horizontal dropdown menu that is dynamically generated using XML for the button labels / URL clickthroughs. The top row of menu items are just static symbols, but the two other rows that drop down from each other are all duplicated movie clips of dynamic buttons whose widths are generated by an equation based on the number of characters in the button label.

So far I've used a movie clip with mouseovers on the top level menu that runs an actionscript function to have the next menu drop down based on which portion of the menu you hover over. The sub menus are movie clips that have a button object inside them that are generated and lined up side by side. Then each one of those buttons has its own mouseover animation and each one runs a function to drop down the menu below.

Can anyone think of a better or more efficient way to design something like this? I'm knee deep into it and I've got all the XML and menu functionality working, but the graphics just arent lining up the way they're supposed to and i'm having lots of problems with button instances etc....

Sorry if this is too vague, I can explain more if need be.