Drop-downs WIP

A drop-down menu is a graphical control element designed to help visitors find specific pages or features on a website.

Drop-downs are used within the UrbanFootprint Analyst interface to select an option from a list of choices presented. Dropdown menus give the user direction on how to navigate through the application’s interface.

UrbanFootprint Analyst application has dropdown menus that can be reached by clicking or hovering on a top-level menu heading that prompts a list of options to drop down.

Ultimate control of web usability is still left with the company as they are in control of what options users can choose from.

Use Cases

Dropdown menus should only be used when there are many options that cannot all be previewed on the application interface without a dropdown ie. in order to conserve screen space on the analyst user interface

Use drop-downs when :

• Using forms and selecting attributes

• Preventing users from entering erroneous data

Accessibility

• When traversing a navigation region with submenus, each submenu would appear upon hovering or focusing the “top level” link. This both reveals the submenu and places its own links in focus order.

• It is important to note that when designing drop-down menus, we must keep in mind that drop-downs behave differently on various devices- taking up different amounts of screen space and requiring different interactions.

• Most smaller screen devices do not allow for the use of type head to navigate quickly to an item in a list, so navigating long lists can be hard to do.