Why drop down menus suck ... most of the time

23 Oct 2004 23:10 - (0) comments

When a menu gets too big a drop down menu can be used. This gives the suggestion of reducing available options and reducing screen clutter. But is this correct?

Drop down menus == bad site architecture

Basically drop down menus are needed to hide links (or show a 'cool' trick).
Hiding links usually obsures hierarchy. All submenu's links are falsely shown having the same importance as the link to the currently shown page. But the siblings to the currently shown page are more important than links from another submenu. Product A is more important to Product B than to Employee C.
Hidding submenus also hides context. You can't see from the hidden submenu which page you are on. You need to mouseover the products-tab to view the other products and their relations to the currently shown product page.
So the solution isn't hiding links but improving the site architecture by reducing and better organizing available links. But how can you do this?

Context is important

You don't need the ability to go to every other page with one click. You need the ability to go to the most relevant pages with one click. For example: a relevant link on a search result page would link to the advanced search page.
A real world example... When I look at the road signs while driving to Amsterdam I don't need to see every city I'll pass while going to Amsterdam. This would be a huge list with a lot of irrelevant information. Hiding arbitrary cities wouldn't help. I only need to see the names of a couple of other big cities (for long distance context) and the next small city/village (for short distance context).

By showing only the most relevant links I don't need to hide links. I'll have enough space to show all links. It also improves the ease of use. The user can see these links, and their relation to the current page, without having to mouseover the main menu-tabs.

Website navigation isn't consistent

Drop down menus have been copied from desktop applications. These desktop applications use tabs like File, Edit and Help to organize and hide functions. Selecting one of these functions usually changes some part of the content. For example Paste adds a copied item to the content. They don't need to show currently selected function for context (you can't be on the Paste page).
The tabs are consistent over most application. Save is always under the File-tab, Copy is always under the Edit-tab.

Websites use dropdowns for navigation. Selecting a menu item changes the whole page content. Because most sites have their own site structure the tabs aren't consistent. You have to look through the submenus to find the page. This asks a lot of extra effort from the user, who has to learn the order of the sub tabs and has to make an extra mouseover to select a link.

Drop down menus do give you the ability to make big out of context steps with one click. You can go from Product A to Employee C with one click. But this is seldomly needed. And if Product A is closely related to Employee C a link to Employee C can be added to the content.

Conclusion

Drop down menus can be good for applications to hide advanced functions. Don't use drop down menus for hiding many links caused by bad site architecture.