[Web4lib] Usability of "fly-out" navigation menus

[Thomale, J]

Hello all,

I'm trying to gather information about the usability of "fly-out"
(pop-out) navigation menus--ones in which links are organized vertically
and a mouseover reveals submenus. I've spent some time searching for
hard usability statistics on these types of menus, and--in between all
of the opinions and passionate arguments for or against--I've found a
lot of conflicting information. I thought I'd pose this question to the
list and see if anybody could offer any insight or further resources
(preferably recent ones).

I've found some information from a few years ago (2000-2001) criticizing
more the shoddy implementation of the menus than the concept itself. In
fact, I remember hating them when I first saw them popping up (ha...pun
not intended): they used DHTML that relied completely on Javascript, and
they required some pretty difficult mouse movement to use. But now there
are techniques for creating almost-pure CSS versions (with only an .htc
behavior file required for IE compatibility) that are accessible and
seemingly easier to use.

I have found a couple of more recent studies that actually do address
the concept and not the implementation, but their results conflict.

The first one:

http://www.eastonmass.net/tullis/WebsiteNavigation/WebsiteNavigationPape
r.htm

was presented at a conference a year ago, and compared six different
styles of navigation. It found that the fly-out menus fared the worst
and an old-school Yahoo-style index listing fared the best. Drop-down
menus (which drop down from a horizontal menu bar) were second place and
fared almost as well as the Yahoo-style index.

Another one:

http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/51/menu.htm

was conducted in 2003 and also found that the Yahoo-style index page is
easiest to use. However, this one determined that the fly-out menus were
only slightly more difficult than the index page and the horizontal
drop-down menus were significantly more difficult and confusing.

This article from 2001 that I see referenced often:

http://www.uie.com/articles/users_decide_first/

suggests that users don't bother taking the time to mouseover menu items
before they make their choice about what to click on, and so fly-out
menus break with their expectations and end up slowing them down.

Finally, this article, which is based on usability data collected in
2000:

http://www.snyderconsulting.net/article_7tricks.htm

states that 5 out of 17 users had difficulty with this type of menu.

I haven't found a thing that really praises this type of navigation, but
I see it used so often these days that I wonder if it's become a
convention. I was hoping that somebody on the list might have some more
(or more conclusive/authoritative/recent) data on this issue.

To muddy the waters even further--in the aforementioned studies, on
subjective measures (i.e., questions asking users which style of
navigation they preferred), users rated the pop-out/drop-down menus
either higher than or, at worst, as high as the more conventional
navigation styles--despite that the users *performed* better with the
conventional navigation. This raises an interesting question (to me):
what is considered more usable--the thing that users think they prefer
(because it looks cool, is fun to use, or whatever), or the thing that
is actually easier to use? Is perception of usability equivalent to
ease-of-use? Or does it depend on the circumstance (an information-rich
public service web site vs. a marketing-driven or artsy-fartsy web
site)? 

I suppose that's just a particular incarnation of "give them what they
want" vs. "give them what they need."

Anyway, I'm babbling now. Thanks for any help you can provide.

Jason

Jason Thomale
Metadata Librarian
Texas Tech University Libraries