Hi Susan,
Very interesting point. It’s great to step back now and then and see if what we’re doing actually makes sense.
When I’m not awash with tasks, I do check out Nielsen’s stuff now and then. I often quote it when I’m making web usability recommendations. Now and then, a client will actually take the advice, but usually not. I just shrug, and do their sillier idea if they insist. (Of course, for a more fun approach to usability, I like going to webpagesthatsuck.com)
Instead, they fall deeply in love with regurgitating everything they can think of. Really bad photos, every sales brochure they have, bios of their pets, etc. It’s really pretty hilarious. And to get this data dump displayed, they want multilevel menus.
Personally, I don’t necessarily want to go as spartan as having no menu, but I do like a minimal menu. To me, two levels is plenty. If you’re going above three levels, there had better be a really good reason, and this really requires great organizational skills. Clients almost never have these skills. But boy, have they got junk to display.
And of course, we know that if you have a menu 5 and 6 levels deep, no one’s going to read it anyway, at least not via menu navigation (they might find it in a search). I have done dropdown/flyouts that have gone very deep. It’s good CSS exercise, I suppose, but I do feel that they’re mostly evil.
We tend to have menus on every last page (I know I do, anyway), and I’m very intrigued by the idea of making better use of breadcrumbs instead of this menu OCD. In one of those deep sites, this can almost make navigation feasible. It would be really nice to "sell" the minimal concept to an adventurous client. On one of the examples at the links above, you do get a bunch of scrolling. But maybe in some cases that’s fine. I’m going to study some of those examples.
Fortunately, we have Wayfinder and CSS, and can make any menu, no matter how absurd.
Thanks, Susan,
Cheers
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