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Paul Krug's "Don't Make Me Think" is a classic guide to designing easy-to-use websites. In the book he makes a pretty compelling case for using tabs instead of dropdowns. His prime example is Amazon.com who lead the way in successfully using tabs.

Therefore, I got a big surprise today when I saw that even they're are using dropdowns and with a really interesting twist .... dropdown menus with boxes instead of an organized list of links. 

Menus like this would be relatively easy to implement in Joomla, perhaps with module position inside the dropdowns.

I'd love to see clickthrough data on these new kinds of menu. I wonder if statistics show that people prefer them and are more likely to use them compared to traditional dropdowns .... ?

Comments (5)

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written by Good Web Practices, November 30, 2007

I definately prefer the amazon drop downs, like the point that you have to click the drop down arrow, or hover over it for a second. I wonder though how many people actually find those drop downs on amazon, because it appears that its only the small arrow that activates the drop down. Surely most people would click the text link just to the left of the arrow?

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written by Tom, November 30, 2007

I don't generally like large dropdowns, but I found some very well implemented ones on the John Lewis site (UK dept. store) the other day that really worked:

http://www.johnlewis.com/

So it appears it's all in the design...

Thanks,
Tom.

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written by Steve Burge, December 01, 2007

Hi Tom

Thanks for the link. John Lewis provides an interesting comparison - they seem like they have dropdown boxes simply to include as many links as they possible can

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written by Anthony Olsen, December 09, 2007

Hey Steve,

Just wanted to let you know that Ive added some mootools dropdown boxes in the latest Joomla Bamboo template: http://showcase.joomlabamboo.com/habitat3. Its a fairly simple implementation involving a tooltip script but I think it adds a degree of flexibility to the standard drop downs.

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written by Good Web Practices, December 09, 2007

Anthony the dropdowns are cool, very nice theme too... Great to see what can be done using Joomla and a good use of mootools

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