[Sigia-l] DHTML Menus and Usability

[Listera]

"Katie Ware" wrote:

> I'm looking for some information about usability, any sites that are similar
> (application and task based) that are good at this or really bad.

I don't know if this is what you want to hear, but here it is anyway (:-):
menus are evil. 

In that respect there's no difference between dropdown, push-up, slide-in,
DHTML, JavaScript or any other type of menu...they all conceal their
contents. You have to know where a particular menu item is, find the
specific menu for it, wait for it to drop down, hold and slide down your
mouse, perhaps slide sideways to reach a sub-menu...and do all this stuff
with perfect timing and dexterity. It's *very* easy to forget about a menu
item, get tired of rolling over all menus to find the right one or (in the
case of badly written DHTML menus) miss the timing of the menu item click,
etc.

If your app relies excessively on menus, it's usually a sign that UI
designers and/or programmers are getting lazy. It's easy to stash a
procedure into a menu, as opposed to finding an exposed and appropriate
place within the application UI for it.

It's better to expose (whenever and wherever appropriate) than to conceal
(in a menu).

I'm not surprised that users forget stuff from menus. But you heard me
ranting about this before ;-)

Best,

Ziya