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Thread: RE: drop down menus
Number of posts in this thread: 2 (In chronological order)
From: Birdsell, John
Date: Thu, Jul 31 2003 7:52AM
Subject: RE: drop down menus
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What about using style sheets to change the color of the background and text
of a text link on when the mouse hovers over it?
The client gets their rollover effect and its accessible.
I have had success in selling this option to graphic rollovers.
Jay
-----Original Message-----
From: Alesia Strawn [mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED = ]
Sent: Thursday, July 31, 2003 11:35 AM
To: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
Subject: Re: drop down menus
>I have the same question concerning rollover menus. A new client is
>insisting they want them. This is a large non-profit so they should be
>concerned with accessibility. We informed them that rollvers are not
>accessible and that many of them don't work with all browsers ...
I agree.
>Their point is, if the top link in the rollover menu links to the second
>level page where all the other links that were in the rollover are listed
>anyway, they've met the accessibility issue.
I also *generally* agree; however, in addition to accessibility matters,
there are maintenance questions. Is it anticipated that the links in the
menus would change with any frequency? If the person who currently works
on the site changed, would maintenance of the menus continue to be
possible? Would the site still work okay if the menus were removed for
whatever reason? Is compromise possible, with menus on the home page, and
not on second level pages if all the information is still available? Is
there a site map? How is the site maintained, templates or includes for
common page elements, for example? Is the rest of the page, or site, U.S.
Section 508 and/or generally standard HTML compliant?
Another thing about menus is that they may add a lot of text to the source
file, therefore increasing the file size and download time (especially if
used in combination with a lot of graphics).
Every site, audience, purpose, etc., is different. Just throwing out an
incomplete list of things to consider.
Alesia
>>On Wed, 30 Jul 2003, NutHouse Studios wrote:
>>
>>>I was wondering if it's possible to make drop down menus for navigation
that
>>>are accessible?
>>
>>Depends on what you mean by accessibility, but the practical answer is
>>"no, and there's no need to". Dropdown menus for navigation are a bad idea
>>and cause serious usability problems. There's little need to consider
>>accessibility issues when we know that it's a wrong approach anyway.
>>Besides, designers who use drop down navigation menus on their pages
>>will hardly take the considerable extra work needed to remove some of
>>their accessibility problems.
>>
>>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
>>
>>>For an example of what I'd like to do, see:
>> > http://www.wcc.cc.il.us/
>>
>>Bad usability and lack of accessibility everywhere.
>>
>>>I know that they're not using ALT tags,
>>
>>Symptomatic, isn't it? But adding ALT attributes (sic) would be like
>>painting a collapsed building.
>>
>>--
>>Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
>>
>>
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>
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From: Jukka K. Korpela
Date: Thu, Jul 31 2003 8:19AM
Subject: RE: drop down menus
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On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, Birdsell, John wrote:
> What about using style sheets to change the color of the background and text
> of a text link on when the mouse hovers over it?
> The client gets their rollover effect and its accessible.
It's surely an option to be suggested for the purpose of making links
change appearance. In fact, it's recommendable even to authors who are now
using just simple links, since it improves usability and especially helps
people who use a mouse but have difficulties in fine motorics, so that
:hover effects help them to see when they have successfully moved the
cursor over a link.
(Using CSS for the purpose is better than using JavaScript and images,
e.g. because text in images is not affected by the user's font size and
face settings.)
But in this case, I think the question was about different rollovers:
features that make a lower-level menu pop up (somehow) when the cursor is
moved over a link, or an element that simulates a link.
--
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/
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