One was the footer of an (older) U.S. Government website:
The other was the navigation for AWS services from the AWS Console:
Both of them have that vibe of: holy crap we have a lot of stuff, I guess we’ll just make a massive grid of links to it all.
The difference is the AWS Console one has a search bar at the top of it. Its primary function is finding things in that menu (but it does search the wider site as well):
The “search a list of things already on the page” idea reminds me of that classic jQuery contains selector. Please allow me:
I thought you were going to try to make it better or something. Bit I guess a general observation is also nice? Thanks.
blogging: it’s whatever.
I love your clean jQuery solution to filter out results.
I suggest to make an input[type=search] input and listen to the “Clear input” action from the user with JS:
document.getElementById('filter-input').addEventListener('input', (e) => {// ...
})
Whenever I log into AWS, I’m in doubt that a designer has been involved. The whole interface feels kinda improvised and duct taped.
I agree. But at the same time it’s so much better than the Azure console–fly outs from every direction, weird AF modal confirmations which then have a toast, maddening inconsistencies. AWS has room for improvement but it’s not a total dumpster fire
Adore these types of menu, but they require discipline from the webmaster not to chop & change things too often. Unless you’re only adding 1 or 2 items, or appending only to the very end of the menu, you’re going to upset someones muscle memory by changing things.
In a dream world; sitemap pages would be presented like these, and not as long vertical tree lists. Sure they’ll have only a handful of users, but they’ll be very happy power-users.
Have you noticed there are two “More” sections in the US Government website?
Anyway these huge menus are such an eyesore. I can already think of simplifying it by collapsing everything into headings and displaying submenus on hover (something we already have had in desktop menus since like forever! – imagine if File and Edit menu were permanently opened and everything in it was always visible)?
We already do that in headers so why not in footers too? Is there a law that all footers must be a list of links? The law should be that a link list shouldn’t exceed 10 visible links.
BTW it’s nice that AWS has search but it isn’t obvious that the menu can be searched.
We’re working through this problem in elegant ways at Knowde.com where we’re launching a new site and mega menu architecture (today!!!) because our taxonomy and product database is so wide.
Go to Knowde.com and hover over market, technology, or producers.
It’s just submenus, what’s elegant about it? It’s the way it was always done. Hahaha