August 2007
Beginner
416 pages
12h 16m
English
Content preview from Designing Web Navigation
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DROP-DOWN MENUS
Drop-down menus are simple HTML selection menus with options. Selecting an option brings the user to the new page. This type of navigation is often used for quick links, which jump to a new page across a site structure, for instance.
Accessibility
For accessibility reasons, do not have the new page reload just by selecting the option and releasing the mouse. This requires JavaScript (called an "onChange" event) and can cause problems with screen readers. Some screen readers will trigger the link as soon as it is read, prohibiting the user from getting to any other options it the menu.
An alternative is to activate the menu selection with an explicit button or link click just after the menu. An advanced solution might be to change the site's behavior based on whether a screen reader is used. A Go button would then appear only if needed.
A drop-down menu on the IBM web site navigates to the site in a different language and country (www.ibm.com, Figure 3-35) and is followed by a Go button to activate the selection.
Figure 3-35. Using a drop-down menu on IBM.com for language selection
The web site for the ASBA Group, a South African banking group (www.absa.co.za/absacoza), has an interesting navigation mechanism. Two drop-down menus allow visitors to first pick a verb, then an action (Figure 3-37). This is part of a sentence beginning with "I want to." A selection in the first ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
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I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.