5 ms·
IMO there's an even better design, which is to not hide links in an expandable menu at all. Just show all the links at once! With appropriate headers and visua
by caseyross 6y ago
IMO there's an even better design, which is to not hide links in an expandable menu at all.
Just show all the links at once! With appropriate headers and visual hierarchy to provide organization, this is better in pretty much every way: faster to use, easier to implement, and more accessible.
The biggest practical objection I see to this kind of "flat" menu is simply that it's hard to make it look good at the top of a page. But any competent visual designer should be able to manage that, aesthetically.
- leephillips 6y agoStrongly agree. I dislike these menus as a reader, and never use them when I design web sites.
- RHSeeger 6y agoDoesn't this make it take up a bunch of real estate in the header? Or am I misunderstanding you?
- input_sh 6y agoLet's say you sell a handful of products in a few categories. I'd rather click on the category and then the product, as opposed to the product being directly accessible behind a dropdown of a category.
- newmnhn 6y agoI'm not fond of big nested menus in general either, but they are good for quick exploration and can be pretty forgiving of poor categorization. I do wonder if sometimes the nested nav is too in-between. Maybe the solution is not to try to squeeze it all into that structure but make "finding the page I want" to be a more top-level experience. EG don't take me to a Category Page, but do let me select a category and start drilling down, whilst keeping it easy to switch between top level categories. Big nested navs are often just ... fiddly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- marcosdumay 6y agoAs a related point, stop trying to shove the entire site navigation into a minimal top menu. Your site is probably just leaving more than half of the screen of desktop users blank, and phone users can gain a lot from a top menu that actually does what it says and an expanded menu that takes the entire screen and lets them see what they are doing. People keep reevaluating how they implement the top menu, keep finding their implementation harmful, and yet do not stop to question the menu itself... No, it must be the implementation details, it can't be that the menu is a bad idea!
- open-source-ux 6y ago"...not hide links in an expandable menu at all" On desktop screens, I agree, but how could this work on mobile? On a mobile viewport, presumably the navigation links collapse ino a menu. The only other mobile option I can see is to place all site links in the footer which feels clunky.
- chrisweekly 6y agoThe footer is a great place to put all the things people usually try to cram into the header.
- GordonS 6y agoCan you point to some examples where you think it's being done well? In principle I agree that multi-level menus are awkward on the web, but showing all the links at once is something I think I only really see in a tiny font at the bottom of the page, which is in addition to a menu at the top.
- UweSchmidt 6y agohttps://www.mcmaster.com/ https://www.mcmaster.com/ This is how I want websites to look :)
- ysavir 6y agoDoesn't look too great on a mobile view. Do you have an example that handles that scenario elegantly?
- 0xCMP 6y agoHow does it not look great on mobile? It simplifies the number of options and simplifies the navigation accounting for the fact that mobile devices would require lots of scrolling on a tiny screen to see as much as you could on the desktop. On the desktop it uses all the screen space to show you more detailed sections you can click right to if you know what you already want.
- Y_Y 6y agoFor one, there's a huge shitty thing that pops over half the screen straight away which ublock didn't catch.
- ysavir 6y agoMy apologies. I forgot to whitelist the site for JS, and when I viewed it, almost the entirety of the page was taken up by the categories sidebar[0]. With JS it looks much, much better, and navigation is definitely usable. Though at this point it's raises the question of what is navigation: are all those item categories navigational aids, on par with other nav items? Or are they a product index and separate from navigation items? In regards to the GP's suggestion of "showing all links at once", I think it's fair to say that links that only go on some pages but not others don't count towards the "overpopulated navbar", which is usually intended to hold navigation aids that are available on all pages. So while I think the site in question does a good job of navigation, I think it does so not by choosing a flat design with all links available in the nav, but by cleanly keeping the navigation to just a few key elements ("Contact Us", "Order", "Activity", "Log in") and deferring all other links to separate UI elements that exist only on the relevant pages. [0]https://i.imgur.com/Plg3JSl.png https://i.imgur.com/Plg3JSl.png
- at_a_remove 6y agoThis sounds great when you are also in control over the number of links on the homepage. This is often not the case. When Big Players demand links (and even redundant links), well, you're gonna end up with more than you wanted.
- overgard 6y agoGreat thing about this too is its very ctrl+f friendly.
- Blikkentrekker 6y agoI noticed too that there is a strange design drive of “submenu's for it's own sake” when the options fit perfectly well into one. The other that annoys me is “icons for it's own sake” when text suffices; I do not like having to figure out the meaning of arcane icons.
- m463 6y agoHonestly, I thought the original ipod menu system was elegantly simple. Basically a slide-left menu system.