Conditional List Help

I am having difficulty designing a flowing page for detailed inventory item entry... currently I have the dabase tables&fields designed, however, I need an easy to use (for the user) page to do entry&editing of new items. I am trying to find an easy and expandable way to create items in a standard format for use with the database, using a cascading conditional list form, which hides the next list entry until the previous one in entered. I prefer to do this on one page in a 1-2 columnar format (per request of my client). It should require only 4-5 conditional items, but must be 'idiot' proof in design, so that editing previously selected items affects all dependant items (easy way is to reset dependant to null). My first attempts at PHP self-loading pages (with jump menu selection lists) was a disaster, and I am unsure if a multi-load PHP system is the way to go, or an all javascript page containing all conditional blocks. Provisions to have list content be pulled from a MySql table to allow editing of items by end users with privs. Furthermore, these DB lists are abstracted one level further to be pulled from different language tables from id linked tables named with the language code (ie items_en, items_fr, items_ko). At least, this is the easiest way I have found. I only need help with this complex conditional list code right now, but, future work is highly likely. It is also possible I may need more help with this project again (and again ;). I take on coding jobs as a courtesy to clients that I sysadmin for, and my PHP coding skills are only fair to medium... I am better at designing the overall engine than the code it uses. I am also -not- a graphic artist. ## Deliverables 1) Complete ownership and distribution copyrights to all work purchased. Reference to contributing authors is welcome. 2) Well commented (english) code. ## Platform Platform independant, but will run on OSX or Linux using: * Apache 1 or 2 * PHP 4.2+ * Mysql 4 * Unicode