[thelist] Testing/suggestions wanted...

[Jonathan_A_McPherson at rl.gov]

Tom,

Works flawlessly in Mozilla 1.0. Apparently it's working in IE 5.5 too, so
good job on cross-browser support.

Comments:

* I don't like the fact that it comes up on right-click. Many Web surfers,
myself included, regularly use right-click on ordinary document text to go
back, view source, download, etc. Your menu will either stop them from doing
that, or make a real mess on the screen when both your menu and the browser
menu come up at once.

(I think it would be appropriate if the menu came up when the user
_left_-clicked on some sort of clearly labeled UI element. Bringing up the
menu on left-click everywhere on the document except links isn't so good
either; what if I want to click-drag and select some text?)

* The "circular" organization of menu items looks sufficiently cool, but
again, you're breaking a very deeply ingrained UI paradigm: in this case,
that menu items are (pseudo)linear. If I were a user, I would be afraid to
take my mouse off any of the boxes in the circle, because in Windows, when
you take the mouse off a menu, it disappears.

* The "back" link should look different from the others. How are users to
distinguish between the "Back to previous menu" link and the "Back to
previous page" link?

* Overall, it's difficult to get accustomed to the hierarchical nature of
the menu because of its unusual shape and the fact that the previous level
disappears as the next is displayed.

I don't mean to slam it -- it's quite cool, actually. I just wouldn't use it
on any site I expected the general public to figure out.

--
Jonathan McPherson, LMIT/SD&I
Software Engineer & Web Systems Analyst
email / jonathan_a_mcpherson at rl dot gov


-----Original Message-----
From: Tom McMillen [mailto:tgmcmillen at yahoo.co.uk]
Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 2:39 PM
To: thelist at lists.evolt.org
Subject: [thelist] Testing/suggestions wanted...


Hi evolters,

I'm trying to write a dhtml menu and would like some
feedback, please visit http://www.beatthesystem.co.uk/
and try the menu out....just left or right click on
the page - then tell me what you think.

It'a a little different, and I think it looks pretty
good when images are used (try the Img submenu)

I don't have a mac, so have no idea if it works on one
(or how you cope with one mouse button ;) so I'd love
to hear that it does work on a mac.

thanks

Tom