Frederic,
how would you rate http://www.ourbrisbane.com/ which is using a mix of
drop down menu and apparent second level navigation.
It could be seen as a solution to make everyone happy!?
Its probably straying a little from Web standards directly, onto
usability issues, but still within best practices. I would like to
see all such menus as dead and buried as the blink element.
I have not done extensive user testing on these kinds of menus.
However, since the beginning of time, in app development, the
recommendation has always been to use submenus carefully and
sparingly, if in doubt, don't. While these are superficially
analogous to main menus, I think in reality they are more like sub
menus, so this well tested observation is worth keeping in mind.
In the case of this site, I'd be inclined to ditch the drop downs,
and have their contents on the pages you visit when you click What's
on, and so on. Which is what actually happens, but confusingly, when
you get to these pages, you get both.
What happens if a user does a find (cmd-f) for some text that is in
one of the drop downs? I note that in your site a lot of it is
repeated, but otherwise, bnothing shows up. Users often use this
technique for finding something - another good reason to avoid Image
Replacement techniques also.
Has anyone done any user testing on drop downs? Tania maybe?
I'd be interested to know wether users use these, or avoid them like
the plague - or don;t even notice them, afterall, how are we supposed
to know they are flyout or dropdown menus?
HTH
john
John Allsopp
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