Frederic,
I want to convince people not to have drop down on some of our
sites at work...
I am looking for some good reasons not to have them...
We have some on our current site and it looks like (from the web
stats) that people are actually using them a lot
Thanks for the opportunity for letting me sound off on one of my
favourite subject - Russ is now running for the corner (a quick
aside, Russ and I just gave a series of workshops round Australia,
and this came up once or twice, My firm views were noted. I have lots
of firm views.).
OK, let's start with the basic UI principles. A menu is a set of
verbs, for doing actions. Navigation menus are a set of nouns for
choosing content. So its akin to using a radio button in place of a
checkbox they are designed for two different uses.
Secondly - while menus on the OSs are designed so that traversing
diagonally to a submenu will not close that submenu, JS submenus (and
CSS ones too) almost invariably close unless you enter directly from
the entry in the main menu relevant to them - this is why they are
difficult for most users and essentially impossible for users without
really good fine motor skills to access.
So,
1. they break the UI guidelines on all platforms that have been in
pace for over two decades for menus
2. they have serious usability issues
3. they have serious accessiiblity issues
A further Usability issue is that by using them, we tend to hide
contextual information about where we are in a site - we tend to know
which major section we are in, but not the subsection within that
section. In non trivial sites, this a major issue.
Why do people use them then?
I think their popularity is a symptom of style over substance, which
drives a lot of web design - The image replacement techniques, misuse
of flash (rarely is it used well, and even when it is used well, it
tends to be used for everything (text and still graphics as well as
interactive stuff) rather than jsut for what it does well).
Just my not so humble appearance.
John Allsopp
style master :: css editor :: http://westciv.com/style_master
support forum :: http://support.westciv.com
blog :: dog or higher :: http://blogs.westciv.com/dog_or_higher
Web Essentials web development conference http://we05.com
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