Chapter 4: Making Sites Usable and
Chapter 4: Making Sites Usable and Persuasive 85 Figure 4-17: Consistent placement of elements assists users in navigating and orienting within a site. However, using drop-down menus shouldn tbe something done just for these reasons. Offering a menu like this has to make sense. What s more, usability experts such as Jakob Nielsen make some excellent recommendations when it comes to using drop-downs, such as the following: Avoid very long menus. Too many options in a drop-down menu become problematic because they require the site visitor to scroll uncomfortably. This can also cause problems for the mobility impaired, limiting the site s accessibility. Avoid menus with short entries. Any menus offering options with very short entries, such as state abbreviations, also become problematic for visitors. Typing the abbreviation into a text box is easier. Avoid menus of known information. Nielsen points out that information we type frequently, such as our birth dates, are better collected via text boxes than drop-down menus. His claim is that this kind of information is hardwired to people s fingers, and that it s easier on them to type it than go through the trouble of selecting a drop-down menu. Despite these warnings, I veoften favored drop-down menus for quick links to site locations, or for enhancing search (see Figure 4-18). Secret #59: Pop-Up Windows The trouble with popups is easily illustrated by the proliferation of pop-up blocking software and implementation of pop-up blocking inWeb browsers such as Mozilla. But most of this has been as a result of the proliferation of interstitial advertising. Various, reasonable uses of popups have been around for a while.
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