Joomla menu system & dropdown menu in template

I am trying to make a simple drop down menu system for my Joomla site. But Joomla menu is completely confusing me. How does a joomla menu work?

For eg: In the image below the whole blue bar is a menu? or each item like 'Projects' is a menu?

Now I can make two pages for Project 1 & Project 2 but where will the 'Projects' link point to? If it does point somewhere then incase of no JavaScript I'd like to point it to a page that shows a list of the menu items.

How do I place my menu at this place in my template?

Why is there a default MainMenu and why do I need to use a menu to show the main co开发者_JAVA技巧ntent on my site. Shouldn't menus be used for making menus. And I only needed a menu item to show my content not that whole Main Menu. The main confusion is the Main Menu.

I don't wanna use a module coz I couldn't find a good one for 1.7 that uses jQuery (All JavaScript on my site is done with jQuery) and I read somewhere it can be made within the template.

All I want is to somehow place menu items lists inside the respective anchors up top so I can just show/hide them as dropdowns with jQuery.

I hope I haven't made the question confusing pointing to what I need to make. It's just that I'm super confused myself.

Please help.

I appreciate the help.

Thanks Alot.

Joomla menus are generated thru modules. In most cases mod_mainmenu. Theese modules you place in module positions. If your menue should be horizontal on top, then you put your mod_mainmenu module in the position "top". Be aware that every template uses different position names.