Kinda complicated on some parts for me, but neat! Thanks for sharing.
Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
181–190 of 203 posts
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#182Small, almost trivial things like that are what distinguishes good from awesome! And great post! As alot of people already mentioned, you don't actually see difference, you just see that it's way better but you can't put your finger on it. Thats what great design is there for!
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#183Is the triangle thing straight from amazon code? Because I think it would make more sense to track mouse movement and keep the submenu shown until the mouse is moving towards the submenu. Not in any specific triangle. If the mouse moves below, above or away form the submenu, the submenu changes.
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, mac has been using this technique for a while. Actually trying it out right now, it still does this, but you need to move it fast. If you move it fast enough within the triangle it'll stay, while if you move it at the same speed straight down, the menu goes away immediately.
There is a small delay, so they don't use the Amazon technique.
Oh yes, you're right. You can tell they use the triangle technique though.
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#185Hey all, I'm on the team that built this. We also built the redesign that launched last year. In fact, this was part of that. The article pretty much nails our implementation. Point of fact: Our team is recruiting. If you dig UX projects like this, shoot our manager Chad an email: chaddes at amazon dot com
Off-topic, but can't miss this opportunity: Please tell us why the Amazon homepage doesn't auto-focus into the search box. I think of this every single time I go to the site.
This has always bugged me. As a result, I decided to try my hand at a Chrome extension to fix it. If it's any interest to you, get it here https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/amazon-search-auto....
It's my first extension, so be gentle if it has issues.
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#186Amazon is often considered a lumbering giant, so it's great to see this type of innovation from them. We all know they spend lots of time on UX, but I had no idea they had teams thinking outside the box like this.
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#187If the right side box is very short, this algorithm gets a bit fussy. Not a problem for Amazon since their right side box is fixed height, but often a problem for menus where there is only one item in the sub-menu (usually because the sub-menu is programatically filled in.) You have to thread the needle moving your pointer to the right, because if you leave the line, it collapses the selection and selects the next it…
Agreed on the small submenu issue. I think this instant behavior makes the most sense when it's always the case that submenu.height() == menu.height(). Was pointed to http://michelf.ca/blog/2005/mac-sub-menus/ by @gecko this morning, which brings up the opposite (and legit) problem: very, very long submenus. Mega dropdowns w/ equal submenu height are a nice use for this, though.
Single-item submenus and super-long submenus are to be avoided at all costs. They are not user friendly. The former has no reason for being -- put the contents in the parent menu as a sub-section. The latter is generally found in auto-generated lists, like lists of fonts or countries.
Usually a menu is a bad UI device for selecting from very long lists. Combo boxes are one alternative. Breaking contents up into chunks and adding another level to menu hierarchy is another possible solution. MS-style hiding rare choices is a third option.
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#188For comparison to native applications: - Firefox 19 uses the delay technique - GTK3 uses the triangle technique - Tk 8.6 does what bootstrap does - I can't figure out what Qt 4 does
Unfortunately I don't think Qt 4 does anything. Submenus are one of the annoying misfeature of the toolkit.
I noticed that Qt programs were less likely to use sub-menus, probably for this reason.
It's doing something; doing "nothing" is what Bootstrap does. But Qt 4 actually seems to go out of it's way to be unpredictable.
_____
|item1|_______
|item2|item2.1|
|item3|item2.2|
|item4|
But then I think it does something with the angle it is moving at to make that sometimes not work.
The behaviour is complex and unpredictable, which is different than nothing.
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed on the small submenu issue. I think this instant behavior makes the most sense when it's always the case that submenu.height() == menu.height(). Was pointed to http://michelf.ca/blog/2005/mac-sub-menus/ by @gecko this morning, which brings up the opposite (and legit) problem: very, very long submenus. Mega dropdowns w/ equal submenu height are a nice use for this, though.
Single-item submenus and super-long submenus are to be avoided at all costs. They are not user friendly. The former has no reason for being -- put the contents in the parent menu as a sub-section. The latter is generally found in auto-generated lists, like lists of fonts or countries. Usually a menu is a bad UI device for selecting from very long lists. Combo boxes are one alternative. Breaking contents up into chunk…
Single-item submenus inevitably occur at some point if the submenu is filled out programatically (as smackfu pointed out). A list of recently open files is a good example. While it's possible to move the single item into the parent menu, that would make the menu confusingly inconsistent.
Re: Breaking down Amazon's mega dropdown
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hm. I'm going to disagree. If you know the engineer can't answer it, it's silly at best to ask it. At worst, it's malicious. See http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/JAQing_off (If you don't know that, then there's no problem and a quick explanation why it's not worth asking should end the thread. It's not something I'd take someone to task for.)
Huh? What on earth are you talking about? Nothing you wrote makes sense. Someone asked a question on the merits of a patent, the likelihood of it being upheld if challenged, if it is at all patented, etc. What you are referring to is anti-intellectualism, to ask questions for the effect of the question itself. Hiding behind the hypothetical, and not for the desire to know the answer. The root question here wanted to…
> Do usually tell people the things you don't feel like doing?
No, but I usually write complete sentences.