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Re: UDM from Brothercake for drop-down menus

for

From: Christian Heilmann
Date: Oct 16, 2005 3:20AM

> >> Feel free to take up the discussion offlist :-)
> >
> > I didn't ask for your advice. I don't really need it. Cryptic
> > messages
> > on the list help nobody. If you got something to say about the
> > matter,
> > say it. If not, just leave the snide remarks for next time and we
> > all
> > have less noise to signal ratio here.
>
> I think you're mistaken. The reason why I've not expounded on list is
> to avoid egging you on. Your advice is not good. The original poster
> should go ahead and use the Brothercake menu and learn how it can be
> integrated into an accessible web site. If I (or someone from
> Brothercake) attempted to do so on this list, a debate would likely
> rage. Your advice is confusing and your solution vague. I really
> wanted to avoid saying that on list, but I don't want to be made a
> fool of by the likes of you, either. My apologies to the list in
> advance.

And you fail to make my advice less confusing by pointing out the
flaws in it. Again, what is wrong about leaving the choice of the
complexity of the menu to the user?

Having developed a menu myself, and being mentioned by another poster
here I was simply pointing out that mine had flaws and approached the
issue in a non-technical manner - which is more confusing and can be
vague but is a lot more about accessibility - as accessibility is
about diverse user groups as much as it is about re-educating
ourselves as developers.
I also pointed out that UDM is a good solution, albeit not perfect yet
and how it could be improved.I don't see how that could be considered
"making them a fool"?

I think we can agree that you will not win clients with less flashy,
but more accessible menu systems with lowest common content. So, if we
want to make the web more accessible, what is wrong by questioning our
own ways of developing? In 1999, you had to create a 5 minute flash
tunnel to sell a site, we stopped doing that, too.

Read the CSS-D or even the archives here. Almost every second day you
get an email of a developer asking for help as the dropdown menu does
not work in one way or another. To me, this looks like we are running
in circles rather than facing the issue that a dropdown menu _does_
need user negotiation. Windows XP had a newly structured start menu
only showing the latest used applications. I have encountered many
users that were confused by that and switched back to the classic
menu. M$ was clever enough to give that option.