Re: [IxDA Discuss] Drop-down menus disadvantages?
Thank you everybody for your suggestions. We will make use of them in our discussions with our colleagues. Meanwhile, we are thinking of what kind of usability test might point the problems of using drop-downs for navigation. We guess we shouldn't concentrate much on statistics, such as number of clicks and time taken to complete a task. We can predict most users will have similar success rates, navigating with or without drop-downs, since all necessary links will be provided in the content area. Would you suggest how to approach a usability test trying to highlight problems with drop-downs? Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32933 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Drop-down menus disadvantages?
bloody mailing list :) On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 7:02 AM, Tim Wright [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: If you have time and budget, I'd reccommend doing a comparitive test. Design both and get users to use both. It's your choice to get each user to use both (within user test) or have seperate users (between users test). Each has different advantages/problems: 1. between users tests means that different users use different interfaces so you'll need at least twice as many users and need to control more rigorously for user differences. 2. within users tests means that you'll need to control for learning effects - users will tend to perform the second task faster! You can control for this by using different tasks or randomising the order of the interfaces. Hope that helps! Tim On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 12:18 AM, Maritn Petrov [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Thank you everybody for your suggestions. We will make use of them in our discussions with our colleagues. Meanwhile, we are thinking of what kind of usability test might point the problems of using drop-downs for navigation. We guess we shouldn't concentrate much on statistics, such as number of clicks and time taken to complete a task. We can predict most users will have similar success rates, navigating with or without drop-downs, since all necessary links will be provided in the content area. Would you suggest how to approach a usability test trying to highlight problems with drop-downs? Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32933 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -- Kei te kōrero tiki au. Kei te kōrero tiki koe. Ka kōrero tiki tāua. Kōrero ai tiki tāua. -- Kei te kōrero tiki au. Kei te kōrero tiki koe. Ka kōrero tiki tāua. Kōrero ai tiki tāua. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Drop-down menus disadvantages?
Elysa's observations are right for perhaps 99.995 percent of existing drop-down menus, but not for implementations that follow progressive enhancement principles. Because Martin and Nikolay are working on a brand-new implementation, my mind is open to the possibility that theirs could be done right. For me and my users, accessibility is the first step toward usability. We can't guarantee accessibility for a menu system that relies on event-handlers including mouseover and onclick. If the user has disabled javascript, or is using a text-only browser or screen reader that overlooks javascript, there had better be a workable fallback. A robust menu system should respond to the mouse and to link-tabbing equally well; and with proper XHTML structure and tagging, search engines should easily catalog everything. It is possible. It just isn't done often enough (yet) to be widely recognized or adopted. A few years ago, I customized a simple two-level dropdown based on Gary Burton's EasyMenu (http://www.easymenu.co.uk/menubuilder/). It will work just as well with more levels, although that was all I needed. It's lightweight XHTML, semantically correct, searchable, degrades gracefully, functions well in every browser I've tested it with including Lynx, and screen readers navigate it without a hitch. So it can be done. Adding a behavioral layer to this with ASP.NET, ColdFusion, PHP or other server-side scripting would be the icing on the cake. Gary Burton made a commitment to functional simplicity that really pays off for our users who require full accessibility. I think it's an equal benefit to everyone else, and I'd love to see it extended. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32933 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Drop-down menus disadvantages?
If the user can highly predict the contents of a drop-down menu's list, then it might be the best solution. So, for instance, a country list or month list for date selection make a lot of sense. For prime navigation where the list contents may be less easy to predict, however, drop-downs pose the numerous problems cited in the posts above. - Matt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=32933 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
