Drop-Down Menus: Don't Neglect Timing
2010 March 29
- Comments
- Topics
-
I was recently building a "mega menu" (a really big drop-down menu panel) for primary navigation, so I decided to re-read the Jakob Nielsen Alertbox regarding them. Apparently the mega menu is the only form of drop-down menu to perform well under user testing.
In the discussion of timing for the interaction, I was reminded of how only a few years ago it seemed that creating drop-down menus using only the CSS :hover pseudoclass was the trend, and how that pretty much violates all of the recommendations.
Continue reading Drop-Down Menus: Don't Neglect Timing
Enhancing Your UI Before Page Load
2009 October 13
- Comments
- Topics
-
A common drawback of progressive enhancement is that the UI will often "flash" or "flicker" when first loading. This is because conventional wisdom of separation of concerns calls for waiting until the DOM is ready to set up the UI for a richer interaction (tabs, accordion, drilldown, the list goes on). While this makes sense academically, we're not always putting the user experience first. Trust me, users do notice these things, even when they occur in under a second.
Personally, the majority of what I do to prepare for an enhanced interaction is to hide and show elements and apply some styles. So, why wait for anything to load? What I really need is to simply check for JavaScript support; an aspect of the browser, not the content being loaded.
Assuming a general case where all that is needed is to A) know that JavaScript is supported and B) apply some enhanced CSS styles when A is true, we can do this as early as the <head /> portion of the page, and incur no flicker penalty.
Continue reading Enhancing Your UI Before Page Load