drop-down menus

[Jian Liu]

> --On Tue, Dec 16, 1997 7:26 AM -0800 "Andrew J. Mutch"
> <amutch at tln.lib.mi.us> wrote: 
> > This can be done with a little bit of Javascript.
> [...]
> > To see how these work in real life, visit our Reference Desk page at:
> > 
> > http://northville.lib.mi.us/info.htm
> > 
> > This page uses 3 menus providing access to Web Sites, Search Engines, and
> > on-line databases.  I use these menus all over the place in our web pages
> > because of their compact size and "automated" jumping ability.
> 
> Keep in mind...when you do this you make your site unusable to those who do
> not  have JavaScript (or have JavaScript turned off).  This appears very
> frustrating to the user...they can seeming choose menu items, but have no
> way to make it go further.
> 

Also, there are people who are not very good with the mouse yet, and they
may click on your pull-down menus and release the mouse at the wrong
place. They will not be given the opportunity to correct the move and
try again. This makes it more frustratiing.

We had something similar here and even had a GO button, but people
complained and we decided to take the javascript out.

Same thing with our Ask A Librarian service
(http://www.indiana.edu/~libweb/question.html).  We had one that would
automatically wrap the lines and decided to stop it because not all the
people can use it. 

Jian
Indiana University Libraries