Improving Dropdowns with a Sprinkling of Linear Algebra

Dropdowns: you use them every day but how can they be improved?

Ben Kamens writes about how Amazon uses a sprinkling of linear algebra to improve user experience when interacting with their mega dropdown.

Before

Moving the cursor from the 'Clothing, Shoes & Jewelry' menu item to 'Clothing' in the submenu was previously quite tricky. Get it wrong and you'll find yourself opening a different drop down menu. Frustrating.

After

Amazon opens up the area that the cursor can move through by calculating a triangle between your mouse and the top and bottom of the open dropdown menu.

Now you can quickly and directly move your cursor to 'Clothing' without frustration.