Hello,
Ioncube is NOT required for menus to work properly. As for formatting styles, they are set via CSS.
Netcontent does require IonCube and a SEO Samba account to function. You can see it in action with a free SEO Samba account too (you can't create items however, you need a premium account for that).
You can create your free SEO Samba account from the website ID card when you have deployed toaster or from the embedded CMS theme when you first install it.