Dropdowns do have their advantages. First, they conserve screen space. Because they are a standard widget (even if an unpleasant one), users know how to deal with them. And, when used in forms and for attribute selection, dropdown boxes prevent users from entering erroneous data , since they only show legal choices.
A drop-down list (abbreviated drop-down, or DDL; also known as a drop-down menu, drop menu, pull-down list, picklist) is a graphical control element, similar to a list box, that allows the user to choose one value from a list . When a drop-down list is inactive, it displays a single value.
If your website contains a lot of information and pages, drop-down menus can become large and unwieldy. With small amounts of information, a drop-down menu can provide a clean and obvious navigation for users . ... This is very frustrating for users who may not be able to access the links that are off their screen.
When should you not use a dropdown?
- Lack of Overview. Seeing more than 20 uncategorized options can be bewildering and intimidating, and make it difficult for users to find the input they’re looking for. ...
- Scrolling Issues. ...
- Inconsistent UI.
Drop down menus are bad for two reasons. Depending on how they’re programed, can be difficult for search engines to crawl. ... Even worse, drop downs encourage visitors to skip important top-level pages. If your site uses drop down menus, you can see the problem right there in your stats: low visits on high pages.
- Select the cells that you want to contain the lists.
- On the ribbon, click DATA > Data Validation.
- In the dialog, set Allow to List.
- Click in Source, type the text or numbers (separated by commas, for a comma-delimited list) that you want in your drop-down list, and click OK.
Create a clear and well-structured drop-down menus
When designing a drop-down menu, having a clean, well-structured and readable item list is very important. To achieve this, you should consider many factors, such as a readable font, clear typography , enough spacing, and even a neat structure/layout, etc.
- Sticky menu – Sticky menus make navigation really simple. Simple is usable – great! ...
- Scroll Panel – Scrolling is really accessible. ...
- Card style – Now card style navigation can go either way so tread carefully with this one!
What can I use instead of a dropdown?
Radio buttons can be used to replace a dropdown in most cases. The advantage of using them over dropdowns is that the options are easily scannable without forcing user interaction to view the available options.
A drop down menu is horizontal list of options that each contain a vertical menu . ... When you click one of the options in the menu bar, such as “File”, a list of options will appear below the menu, such as New, Open, Close, and Save. You can click any of these options to select it.
What is the difference between listbox and drop down list?
Dropdown Lists. Summary: Listboxes and dropdowns are compact UI controls that allow users to select options. Listboxes expose options right away and support multi-selection while dropdowns require a click to see options and support only single-selection.
What is the difference between dropdown and select?
Select versus Dropdown
Use the select component inside a form where users are selecting from a list of options and submitting data. Use the dropdown component to filter or sort content on a page.
What is dropdown option?
A dropdown allows a user to select a value from a series of options .
Do Dropdown Menus have any Impact on SEO? For the most part, no dropdown menus do not have any effect on SEO . The user experience could potentially slow the site speed or discourage mobile navigation on your site but in terms of meta data, content and rankings, dropdown menus are simply a navigation item.
It depends! Depending on how your menu is coded, those secondary and tertiary links may not be visible to search engines. That won’t have a negative impact on those pages, but it’s also not ideal in terms of their overall optimization. It may also have an impact on crawling.
Regional is not a type of navigation system for a web site.
