These drop-downs are often tied to JavaScript to work correctly, which may be disabled
or unavailable.
Form-based drop-downs are not standard, obvious menu constructs, so visitors
might skip right past them. Drop-downs are often used for contact forms and other
areas not generally associated with navigation.
Never use server-side image maps. From a technical standpoint, this might be the biggest
no-no. Server-side image maps present significant accessibility hindrances by effectively
hiding links behind code, making them completely inaccessible to screen readers. (These
are not to be confused with client-side image maps, which use standard, compliant HTML
to accomplish a similar effect, and which do not have any immediate accessibility
challenges.)
Avoid mystery meat navigation. In short, this means designing obtuse visual menus that
have no intuitive meaning (see Figure 4-6). For instance, imagine a set of links represented
only by icons??”a house, a T-bone steak, a wrench, and a flame. No one except the designer
has any clue what the heck they mean. Equally bad are menus that only reveal themselves
if rolled over. (The phrase ???mystery meat navigation,??? which describes this kind of design,
was made famous on Web Pages That Suck,6 a site hosting a collection of bad web design
practices.
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