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Re: drop down menus

for

From: Kynn Bartlett
Date: Aug 1, 2003 7:03PM


On Wednesday, July 30, 2003, at 10:38 PM, Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
> For a detailed discussion of the drawbacks of navigational drop down
> menus, as well as an advice on fixing some of the worst problem if you
> have been forced to use them, please check
> http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/forms/navmenu.html

Good discussion (as always), Jukka. I also ranted about this topic
on my Maccessibility blog a while ago:

http://www.maccessibility.com/archive/000592.php

My take on it is that, sure, you can make it accessible to your
visually impaired users (which is what, by and large, most people
STILL seem to mean by "is it accessible?"), but you may also be
negatively affecting the usability of your site by even thinking
about these types of menus.

Not everyone seems to agree with me on this -- in fact, I'm in a
minority (what else is new? at least Jukka and Jakob are here with
me), but I still say I'm right. :)

If you use drop down menus, use them with caution, and for heaven's
sake, do sufficient user testing to make sure that they actually
help you do what you to do.

--Kynn

--
Kynn Bartlett < <EMAIL REMOVED> > http://kynn.com
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain http://idyllmtn.com
Shock & Awe Blog http://shock-awe.info
Author, CSS in 24 Hours http://cssin24hours.com
Inland Anti-Empire Blog http://inlandantiempire.org



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