Avoid a Drop-Down with More than Two Levels Here are some ways to make this controversial element more usable. This is a great way to take this large element out of the layout without negatively impacting usability.ĭrop-down menus do in fact organize content into small, uncluttered elements, but if not done correctly, they can be just as bad as a messy layout.
The sign-in element is part of the navigation, then appears in the form of a drop-down. Display ModulesĪ drop-down can be an excellent way to tuck away an obstructive menu, which the user can click on to reveal. The Best Buy website, shown below, does just this. The drop-down menu is a friendly feature that all consumers can easily figure out, so it is a perfect way to organize products. You will see many e-commerce websites use drop-down menus to show products or categories of products. A drop-down menu ultimately helps pull together links, such as categories, out of layout elements, such as the sidebar. Why? Blogs are driven by a large amount of information, so the layout needs to be as clean as possible to hold that content. You will see many blogs use a drop-down menu to organize categories and tags. A drop-down element contains all of the different categories for a certain section of the website. Most commonly, drop-down menus are used to pull all of the pages in a certain category together in one organized element. You will often see many trends in which drop-down menus are used. The article also includes various tips and suggestions to help you work with your drop-down menus. In this article, we take a closer look at the nature of drop-down navigation menus, analyze situations in which they should or should not be used, discuss various implementations and finally showcase a couple of bad and good examples of such menus. Huge vertical drop-down panel from Foodnetwork notice a close button (the "x" in the upper right corner). These panels appear temporarily and disappear on their own when users move the pointer to another top-level option or to a “regular” part of the screen. Just yesterday Jacob Nielsen the results of his recent drop-down menus study, in which he found out that big, two-dimensional drop-down panels that group navigation options help users to avoid scrolling and can precisely explain the user’s choices with effective use of typography, icons, and tooltips. Yes, that’s right: drop-down navigation menus can be user-friendly. If structured correctly, drop-down menus can be a great navigation tool, while still being a usable and attractive design feature. From a design standpoint, however, drop-down menus are an excellent feature because they help clean up a busy layout. As a general rule, most Web developers, especially usability enthusiasts, say it is bad practice to use drop-down menus because they are confusing, annoying and oftentimes dysfunctional.
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