Problem with useClick: true about superfish

[joeldbirch]

This sounds like how I think it should work. Basically, useClick turns the top level links into simple submenu togglers. All they do is open and close the submenus, similar to the Finder's menu bar on OS X. Personally, I'll probably never implement a menu like this, but people have requested it.

I'd be interested in hearing your suggestions on how it should work, though. Thanks.

Thank you - i think this makes sense in OS X for example to choose applications etc. but the the current behavior of the menu does not work for websites i think. If you see my example above it means that all links were i wrote "cant click here" are not noticeable by users but in all cms-systems i use (typo3,contao,joomla...) the structure of a menu represents all sites in the sitestructure. That means many of my sites are not visible by users... My idea for the next release:

1. If you click on a link in menu that contains child elements the submenu opens (thats how it works now).
2. BUT if you click the same link in menu that contains child elements a second time it brings you to the linked content...
3. Fixed

So we got all linked content + the nice Finder's menu behavior...

Hope you like it :)

..its very nice for touch-devices too...

[joeldbirch]

Really appreciate your thoughts on this. I definitely get your concern, which is why I wouldn't bother using useClick for most websites. I imagine this sort of click behaviour might be more suitable for some sort of web app where the menu contents are actions rather than links.

Note that touch devices behave similar to how you describe even without setting useClick to true, so that's probably not relevant.

But exploring your suggestion on how useClick should behave: you don't think the submenus should be closed by the same link you clicked to open them? If so, then what event would close the submenu? Still a mouseout? This would be quite different to how some would expect a click-to-open menu to behave. All the examples I have seen leave the submenu open even on mouse out, requiring either a click elsewhere on the page or a second click on the item that opened it (which would follow the link if implemented the way you describe).

Another question is: should only the top-level items require a click to open and deeper nested submenus open on hover, as per OS X's Finder menu? Currently I require a click for all submenus.

It's good to get feedback from people who requested (are interested in) the useClick feature because I'm sort of having a hard time fully understanding the possible use cases for it.

1. I think its unnecessary to close a submenu by clicking the same link you clicked to open them. To 2 seconds ago I did not even know that this works like this becouse i never needed/used that function ;) I think we dont need that because if you click on another menu item that contains a submenu the previous opened menu will auto-close ;) Works great ;) Thats it. So just let us use this second click to open the link instead of closing a submenu that automaticly closes if you want another submenu :)
2. I dont like "mouseout" or something smiler here because i think useclick is the best for touch-optimized sites. I testet the standart(new) touch-feature and do not 100% like it, but useclick is perfect for this.
3. No hover -> touch...

If you ask me, let useClick exist as it is if you like it. But just copy it -> rename it to useTouch and make it a second function that works as we described here :)

[joeldbirch]

1. Sometimes you want to see what is in the menu but then go back to reading the current page, so the menu needs a way of closing.
2. I'm quite confused by this point. Touch devices currently behave exactly how you want (Windows Phone 7 aside, which is a bug) without useClick. Can you explain where the difference is, please?

[joeldbirch]

Thread seems dead. Will close.