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Originally Posted by Sonist
Why do you dislike Flash for menus?
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kacir did a good job covering this.
In my case, it's simple: Flash navigation is not usually ADA-compliant. (I work for a public university, where this is critical.) Also, see Jakob Nielsen (my favorite usability guru) on Flash usability:
Flash: 99% Bad
Nielsen argues that there are usability problems with the way Flash is often used, not necessarily with Flash itself. Interesting stuff.
Here's one of my favorite comments by Jakob Nielsen on oddball navigation:
Quote:
The website of J.K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter books) might be an exception to the avoiding-mystery rule. The site feels more like an adventure game, but that's appropriate because its primary purpose is to feed fans rumors about Rowling's next book. The site contains many an oblique element. There's no way, for example, that you'd ever guess that a bunch of paper clips are a link to the FAQ. The site violates most guidelines for hypertext links: it has no perceived affordance of clickability and only the most tenuous of metaphors maps the reference domain to the target domain.
User research with children shows that they often have problems using websites if links and buttons don't look clickable. At the same time, using a virtual environment as a main navigation interface does work well with kids, even though it's rarely appreciated by adults (outside of games). Also, children have more patience for hunting down links and rolling over interesting parts of a page to see what they do. On balance, the mystery approach to design succeeds for Rowling -- just don't try it for sites that are not about teenage wizards.
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Mastery, Mystery, and Misery: The Ideologies of Web Design
Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
Interesting reason noted in the original post. Mouse hovering is important to many sites. But I see an easy workaround. A multi-touch device could be set to always hover the mouse if two fingers are pressed on the screen (say any finger from your off-hand).
Heck, I already do something similar frequently with a regular keyboard and mouse -- Control & Left mouse drag to copy something in many Microsoft applications. Or Shift & Left mouse drag to "pan" in Adobe Photoshop.
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Actually, I was thinking that inside Flash, a single finger could be "hover," whereas one would tap with a second finger. This might be a good user-configurable option for web browsers on multi-touch screens in general, actually.
(Hm... we use hover-dropdown menus on our site where I work. I think I'm going to need an iPad to be able to test this.
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