Giant Bomb's Drop-Down Menus

Howdy folks. Longtime fan of Giant Bomb. That ain't gonna change; there is no better place for relevant video game content. This is unquestionably my favorite website.

For a while now, I've had a gripe with the design which I wanted to draw to folks' attention to. Maybe it just affects me, maybe it is inconsequential, you decide.

I have literally had this issue dozens of times: I click on my browsers URL box. I type in "GI." I click on www.giantbomb.com on my browser's suggested URLs. I drag my cursor from the top of my computer screen to the featured video/article/podcast's play button.

This is where I have my issue; dragging the cursor from the top of my browser to the video box often initiates a drop-down menu, usually from the Videos or Podcasts menu--but I click in the direction of the video's "Play" button, only to have clicked some video or podcast drop-down menu selection, to be swept away to a different page, instead of the video page that I want. Sometimes it happens mid-video, when all I meant to do was pause the video because I need to talk to someone or even just go to the bathroom.

Honestly, this can go unfixed or unconsidered and I will still be a big fan, but it is something that has happened many, many times over the course of about 5 years. I can't imagine I'm the only one, but maybe I am. Anyways, thanks for reading, keep on dudin'.

EDIT: I just saw this thread http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/bug-reporting-33/technically-not-a-bug-just-ui-that-bugs-the-crap-o-1768509/#46 about the same thing. Delete this discussion at will, do take our coinciding suggestions as a sign that this is a genuine UI issue.

@ketonic: Event targeting with menus has been an issue on some mobile devices, but shouldn't be affecting desktop use.

What device/browser?

*Edit* On second thought, I think I understand what you are saying now. If I'm understanding you correctly it's not really a bug, and more of an issue about how fast we want the menu to display. On one hand, from a navigation perspective, having the menu pop up quickly is nice, but if you are quickly mousing over to get to the "video play" button, you'll accidentally click a menu item, instead of mousing away to remove the menu. The only fix would for us to put a delay on the hover for the show menu. That way, if you mouse quickly, say 0.2 seconds, we don't show menu.

Wonder what other people think.

"Event targeting" you say? I am not familiar.

Chrome. Windows 8.

I kind of thought I explained it thoroughly enough, but basically: I drag the mouse pointer from the top of my browser to the video. I click, but the cursor has dragged over one of the menu options and initiated a drop-down menu, and when I meant to click on the video, I have clicked on "Bombin' in the AM" or "Vinnyvania."

Again, I ain't trying to be a stinker, I've just done this over and over and over and over.

Is there any way for users to set whether they want a delay or not? I hadn't heard of this issue at all until someone made a thread about it a few months ago, and then someone else made a recent thread about it, and now there's this. Personally, I do not want any sort of delay on those menus. I still have no idea how people are doing this, I've tried to recreate the problem on my end but it just doesn't happen for me. It's worth mentioning that I almost always pause videos by either tapping the space bar or clicking on the pause/play button - as in, not on the video, but on the actual button. Maybe that extra half-second of accuracy leaves enough time for the menu to go away? Chrome 64-bit, Windows 10, good ol' mouse and keyboard desktop.

I appreciate your replies, I'm not trying to burn anybody.

@believer258: So you're not using mouse clicks to pause and play videos? That would absolutely explain why you haven't had the same issue. Have you ever navigated to another tab in your browser, but upon returning to Giantbomb, using the mouse pointer to hit play initiates the problem? The other thread has lent me some confidence that this is not an isolated incident, I would replace this "delay" option with a click option; simply click on a tab to access it. Done. It throws the Store, New Games, and News tabs into question because they don't have drop-down menus, but I don't see this as a problem. Clicking on them could lead to their respective pages, instead of drop-down menus.

Maybe NOT fixing this problem leads to more page views... I don't think terribly ill of Giant Bomb staff if this is the case and they don't fix it accordingly, but that's not great. Pretty sure that page-views have nothing to do with this problem--but it seems ongoing! The other thread was made in March!

It's not isolated to just you and I feel like I use the mouse to stop and start videos enough for this to have happened to me. I definitely do a fair bit of tabbed browsing, too.

Happens to me all the time, especially infuriating mid video.

Same happens to me at least once a day. Switching from another tab to (un)pause a video will fairly often lead to me clicking on a video category instead of the video player.

It absolutely happens to me all the time. I would love a delay on those menus.

I've gotten used to them, but it did take me months of making that mistake to remember to look out for it.

@believer258: I also didn't understand the issue at first. I think the issue OP is describing is not a bug, but he's just mousing over the menu - and then moving the mouse down to where the play button is. Instead of mousing off the menu, he's just clicking on the opened menu. It's not so much a bug, as it is a usability thing.

I can experiment with some changes, but I don't want to add a delay or anything.

@jslack: I can dig whatever you say, man. I am not a website engineer, but I do feel like five of the seven people who commented on this thread feel like it is an issue that needs solving, and there has been a thread on this issue with almost 50 posts from March 2015. ...really, though, what you say goes, this is bound to be my last comment on the topic. Thanks for what you do.

EDIT: I also referred to the issue as a "gripe with the design" as opposed to a "bug," but it would be insane to expect a website to have a forum for "gripes with design," I suppose. Maybe it is something about my notion of Dave as a UI wizard and someone very interested in UI design that I think this is an issue that could be fixed. (I know Dave is not on the team anymore, he is kind of a UI guru to me, though.)

Kids and their reflexes these days. I'm a scrub noob who never had this issue, i guess. I like the idea of an optional delay if it's feasible.

Happens to me constantly. Really annoying when I lose my place in a video because I wanted to pause it to go do something else or whatever.

@ketonic:All good! Feel free to talk about the issue as much as you want, that's what this forum is for :) We definitely want to make the experience as good for everyone as possible. Trying to figure out an approach for this.

@ripelivejam: It's very unlikely (in fact, it definitely) not possible that we'll have an option for display delay. It will either be changed for everyone or not at all.

Just to add my name to the list of "ye, that totally happens to me far more often than I'd really like to admit (for what it says about my reflexes telling my mouse hand to scooch down and click blindly and assume everything will work out rather than a menu overlay meaning I don't unpause the video but navigate away)".

I actually thought the "resume from here" video feature was added to the site primarily to make it less annoying when you do that (presumably there could be a query run on the visit data that shows just how common it is for someone when they "play some video"/"visit page accessible from drop-down-menu but only for a few seconds"/"go back to playing that video again" as a series of requests with a specific pattern). It happens that much that I assumed it was something common enough that the dev team would also have noticed it. I guess you have to play videos, pause them, use another tab, and then try and tab back (via mouse click to put it above the window) and resume without remembering the drop-downs will fight you.

@jslack: yeah i understand why that wouldn't be feasible. Honestly it doesn't bother me any adding a delay, and if it helps out those having this issue then that's fine by me (if it comes to that).

Thanks for yours and eveyone else's hard work and attention to feedback.