jtnt://life/unedited

Dropdown menus are evil. I have proof.

Myself and the other two developers where I work are hot on the issue of ridding all future sites that we develop of those dropdown menus used to "enhance" a website's navigation which seem to be de rigeur since about a year or so ago. Even when they are done with nice and purty pure CSS, they are still the clunky, startling things they always have been.

The HierMenu sample page linked to above shows one of our (and others') gripes with dropdown menus. Looking at the two menus demoed, one has no idea what the menu is going to do. Even I moused over the top example and thought it was broken until I thought to click on it. And I physically recoiled when the menu popped down.

Here are some links to resources that back up our claims that dropdowns are the devil:

IBM DeveloperWorks: "...menus that pop up automatically when the user positions the cursor over a particular item onscreen. Whatever you call them, these things can be so difficult to use that they border on evil."

User Interface Engineering: "Users Decide First; Move Second"

Jakob Nielsen and Marie Tahir speak out. "In fact, many users are startled when they hover over an area of the screen and a new element pops up unexpectedly."

Shorewalker.com: "Once you realise the dangers of flying menus, you have to confront the truly difficult issue of Web site navigation."

Cascading vs Indexed Menu Design: "...Participants selected the Index as their first preference..."