I'm much more of a clicky menu person myself, but if you must go mouse over then, delay before showing and delay before closing too!
Thursday, 26 March 2009
Mouse over menus and delay
Just been looking at menus, not for the first time nor the last. One thing i picked up on in Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox is his opinion that mouse over menus should appear after a half second delay, this is to reduce the irritating flicker you get when moving the mouse around a page. I've only seen this implemented a couple of times, can't remember where, but I totally agree with this approach.
I'm much more of a clicky menu person myself, but if you must go mouse over then, delay before showing and delay before closing too!
I'm much more of a clicky menu person myself, but if you must go mouse over then, delay before showing and delay before closing too!
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I've always delayed before hiding a mouse-over item (menu, pop-up, whatever). To me, this is essential. As is ensuring that if they mouse back over the item during that delay, it doesn't then vanish.
ReplyDeleteIn the past I have sometimes given a 'catchment area' around the visible item which has a slightly slower delay - to allow for awkward mouse movements and so on.
I haven't delayed before displaying something - I think this depends on the context; a dropdown may not want a delay, whereas a tooltip oughta.
No delay of any sort, though, is not a good thing.