[thelist] Dropdowns - good or bad?

martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com
Tue Nov 21 11:38:16 CST 2000


Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Richard

Both examples could be solved using other methodologies - why not
use a hierarchical list on the first site (with bookmarks to each section)?
What's wrong with normal hyperlinks on the second? Why force users
to learn *your* way of doing things when they already know the 'underlined=
link => click on it' paradigm? This is pretty close to the core of HCI: don't
force
users to learn stuff specially for you (they won't).

That said, I have seen secondary/tertiary navigation with dropdowns
implemented fairly successfully - http://news.bbc.co.uk/ has links to
related stories using dropdowns. However, have a look at their
low-bandwidth version - they just use normal links.

Also, many people implement drop downs without a 'go' button, simply
using an onChange event to fire the user off. This has major usability
(what if you slip and let go by accident..?) and accessibility (relying on
client-side scripts alone to use the site is very inaccessible to many disabled
users).

Question: are they good because the client asked for them?
(you seem to be implying this...)

Cheers
Martin



Please respond to thelist at lists.evolt.org
To:   thelist at lists.evolt.org
cc:   Ari_Herzog at Instron.com


Subject:  RE: [thelist] Dropdowns - good or bad?



Herzog, Ari [Ari_Herzog at Instron.com] asked:

> -----Original Message-----
> Subject: [thelist] Dropdowns - good or bad?

Good, IMO.

We use them on, um, four sites at the Clients' requests.

On one site, there's a single, long page with a number of cases cited.  We
started out having hyperlinks to bookmarks at the top of the page but this
was getting unwieldy so we changed to a drop-down menu which works fine - I
reckon - and takes up less space.

Another site only has a horizontal bar with the content below.  Again a
common menu bar include works very well.



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