[thelist] general trend with primary buttons on drop down menus

[Bob Meetin]

Okay, aside from the fact that not everyone loves dropdowns, what is the 
general trend with the first button of a dropdown?  Should it be a link 
or should it simply activate the menu?

I can see times where people might not think to click on it once they 
see there is a menu forthcoming.  With some menus not every button 
activates the dropdown, so it is reasonably obvious that those buttons 
activate pages.  Sometimes I make that top level button link to the same 
page as the first 'obvious' button. 

A side effect of this practice with some content management systems is 
that in the page URL you will have a different Itemid (the menu button 
ID) which I'm thinking will diffuse or confuse search engines.  Is this 
a valid concern?

You will see something like:

index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=116&Itemid=159 ==> this 
would be the main button
index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=116&Itemid=326 ==> this is 
the first drop down item

Same content but different itemid

Would there be any reason to create a 301 redirect to train the search 
engines to see the two as one?

-Bob