I work for a large university, and we're trying to come up with some ideas for our drop-down menus, which are fairly standard, not too fancy.
The university has their main site, and many sub-sites, each of which has its own set of menu links. Besides the domain name and theming, these are essentially all separate sites.
These sub-sites often link to each other in their main menus, which can be disorienting. You click on a link in a menu, go to a page, want to look at the same menu, but you're on a different site entirely, so you have different menu options.
Are there good ways to visually distinguish these cross-site menu links? I'm wondering if an arrow icon next to the link or something would help let people know they're leaving the site.