I am new to web design and I am trying to create a drop down menu system that will let visitors narrow down what they are looking for.

Example.

color
size
brand
<<search>>
results



I want drop downs where they can select say, red, 10 and Nike and the results will be all the red, size 10, Nike shoes on my site. My problem I hope to get an answer for is what this is called so I can read and learn how to do it. I don't think it could be taught to me in a forum. So some direction on how I can find information so I can learn to do this would be great.

You need server-side coding for that, PHP, .Net etc. to accomplish it and it's going to require session state variables to hold the choices as the user makes them.

For example, you might have a form control with drop downs for color size brand, and a button to submit the filter information. The action of the button then puts the filter criteria into session variables and from there the search function with database SQL statement is modified to query those criteria.

Also related to this topic is creating these forms/filters is cascading drop downs, meaning that the choice of dropdown 1 will affect the options in dropdown 2.