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Re: UDM from Brothercake for drop-down menus

for

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Oct 15, 2005 8:00AM

> A "perfect" solution would be brothercake's with an AJAX layer only
> loading the content of the sub sections when you activate a main
> section.
>
> Or - here is an idea - make a basic navigation that gives _only what
> makes sense in this section_ and *offer* the fancy dropdown menu as an
> option!
>
> http://www.icant.co.uk/articles/navigation/

> Can we see an actual example of this :-) Better yet, forget the
> example - I think your best advice might be to drop back 10 yards and
> dispense with drop-down menus completely. My advice, of course, would
> be different and I'd be glad to offer it - offlist only.

How was that email helpful to the issue at hand? As we cannot expect
the dropdown to be useful to all visitors - but be in the way of some
(40 links to tab through where 5 could be enough) how is giving the
dropdown as an option a bad idea?

We do use simple search and advanced search to cater for different
needs, why not simple navigation and advanced navigation? Right now
you see this in some products:

They offer a fancy multi level dropdown navigation as the standard and
an "accessible text version" as the fallback. The text version also
has less navigation (just the one necessary - the main sections, the
current section and a link to the sitemap). But if I were to have
issues using a mouse I don't want to get a text only high contrast
version, all I want is the simplified navigation.

It is not about black and white good or bad, it is about giving the
visitor choice or assuming what we want is what every visitor wants.