[thelist] Select Menus - Are they usefull?

Moe Rubenzahl moe at maxim-ic.com
Fri Mar 22 18:25:01 CST 2002


First issue is whether they work -- there are browser/platform
combinations where they either don't work, are slow, or act buggy.
Not an issue in your case because you wisely used the drop-down
rather than higher-tech mouseover methods.

Second is page size -- they can affect your modem users. Again, small
issue for you.

Third is the usability issue. User Interface Engineering did a paper
on this -- see uie.com. (UIE is excellent -- they actually TEST their
opinions). They found that having users SEE their choices greatly
improves their likelihood of finding what they want. The human mind
is brilliant at seeing a word, say, 'shoes', on a crowded page. If
SHOES is listed under APPAREL, the user will see it; if it's
invisible, hiding in a pop-up, the user is likely to miss it.

And so are search engines. Having it in the pop-up may make it less
likely to appear.

All that said, you need to make the call based on what it is. In the
SHOES example, you probably would not want to use it. But if the
organization is clear and the user is very certain to click on the
item, then it's fine.

Here is what we did. In our case, we felt it very important that all
of our product lines be right there for the user to see:

http://www.maxim-ic.com

On the left, you will see 25 product lines.

But we also had a list of "Solutions" or Applications Area, pages and
those were less important for visitors to spot immediately, so we put
those in a drop-down list, as you did.
__________________________________________________________________________
Subject: [thelist] Select Menus - Are they usefull?
Author: Donald Noble
Date: 3/23/02 12:08 AM +0000

>I would like peoples opinion on whether using <selects> to create a
>'drop down menu' are usefull?
>
>On our site <http://www.AccessibleComputers.co.uk> I use one as part of
>the header to allow users to quickly get to any product type, the second
>level in a 3 tiered navigation system.
>
>I have read material by both Jukka Korpela and Jakob Nielsen, who both
>argue against them, but it does provide a compact method of showing a
>lot of choices.
>
>The form is submited to a php page, which rediects to the correct page,
>so JavaScript dependancy is not an issue here.
>
>(also posted to alt.html)
>
>Cheers, Donald
>--
>      http://www.AccessibleComputers.co.uk
>  Hardware, Software & Custom built PC Systems
>
>
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