On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 12:32:48AM +1200, Bill Mooney wrote: > as I understand it, the use of vertical rather than horizontal > navigation links is to be preferred - maybe, I think! :)
A few other people have mentioned this, so I looked into the literature. A quick survey shows that horizontal menus are easier than vertical. (cascade -- the "mouse hovering and drop-down" menus -- are unsurprisingly terrible for usability!) For example, in ---- Dong, Jianming; Salvendy, Gavriel. "Designing menus for the Chinese population: horizontal or vertical?" Behaviour & Information Technology 18.6 (1999). 27 Jun. 2009 < http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/014492999118887 > This research investigated the language differences between English and Chinese and the implication on the design of menu presentations for computer interfaces. Eighty Chinese subjects and twenty American subjects participated in this experiment. The results of this research indicated that the menu layout should be congruent with the language being used. Horizontal English menus result in better performance than vertical English menus. However, vertical Chinese menus result in better performance than horizontal Chinese menus. It is important to design menus based on the language being used rather than the linguistic traditions of the population using the interface. The effects of menu layout also depend on whether the search task items were presented in English or Chinese. ----- Horizontal menus saved an average of 1/2 second and reduced error rates by 35%, when compared to vertical menus. (for native English users) I think it's safe to assume that speakers of other European languages react the same way -- AFAIK, all the European languages we have translations for are read left-to-right, and use spaces to delimitate words. Japanese is *not* the same, but it would be tricky to add a separate navigation system just for one language. Cheers, - Graham _______________________________________________ lilypond-user mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/lilypond-user
