Nomenclature: dropdowns vs. popup menus
I just read this article on HTML Dog, discussing people’s dislike of “dropdowns” and such. I don’t necessarily like them or hate them, but what annoys me is people calling them “dropdowns”. I’ve always thought “dropdowns” referred to select boxes like this:
. What they’re calling “dropdowns”, I call “popup menus”. And really, they’re being used as menus, and they popup when you click or mouseover them, so doesn’t that make more sense?
July 16th, 2004 at 1:20 pm
Actually Jennifer, the menu you have illustrated is a “pop-up” menu.
Technically it could also be called a pull-down-menu, since you have to click (pull) to activate the menu.
It should never be called a drop-down-menu. DDMs are those which open on mouseover (ie: no click is required).
These naming conventions have been around since the very first GUIs but, naturally, they were clearly defined by Apple Computer, Inc.
See: http://www.usabilityfirst.com/glossary/term_342.txl
July 16th, 2004 at 1:46 pm
You say that the HTML select box should never be called a dropdown, but according to the definition on that site, dropdown menus are displayed by clicking (it doesn’t say anything about just mousing over), and they can appear in places other than menubars. Sure sounds like the definition applies to me. Though I wouldn’t use the word “menu”, since it’s not really a menu. I’d call it a “dropdown box” or “dropdown list box” or just “dropdown” for short. And I would say that “pulldown menu” doesn’t apply to select boxes, because, according to that definition, pulldown menus require the user to hold the mouse button down to access the options, which you don’t need to do with a select box. Their definition for “popup menu” does seem to apply the best, but I still don’t like it. Probably because of the terminology used by people I’ve worked with in the past.
I’m stubborn and I’ll probably still call them dropdowns, though maybe I’ll call them dropdown list boxes or select boxes when I need to be clear. And the other things can be just plain menus.
July 16th, 2004 at 4:08 pm
My mistake Jennifer. You’ve caught me out, I dropped that link in without really reading the text - so sure was I that I was right!
I’ll crawl back into my hole now.
July 16th, 2004 at 4:11 pm
Hehe, no need for that.
Anyway, thanks for pointing me to that glossary, it was interesting to see.
July 16th, 2004 at 7:56 pm
You’re very welcome.