Menu bar useless on a touch screen

Grab your favorite touch screen device, then try to use the menu bar on this website. It is utterly useless on a touch device. One needs to be able to click on the menu item and then have a selection of choices. Having the menu appear magically when hovered over is neat but does not work in every case.

Are you referring to the nopcommerce.com website? There is a touch screen template in the extensions and themes 'nopMetro'.


Try this :
http://www.bmobilized.com/en/
Type in the nopcommerce.com URL
If nothing else, it is impressive to see them turn your website in to a mobile version in less than a minute.!!!

Yes, I am referring to the nopCommerce site. A website to convert a website to touch capable is neat but does not solve the underlying problem which is that one must think about the multitude of ways a website can be accessed these days. A special 'mobile' version is OK for some cases with a small screen device such as a phone but on a tablet is not as helpful.

Looking at my current website stats I see a large number of folks using iPads and the like, so having a default website design that works for PCs and tablets is essential.

The nopMetro template is very interesting. Having the menu bars flay in from both sides of the page is a bit confusing, as is being able to stack them up, i.e. get multiple menu bars to display on the same side of the page, or having a menu bar showing on both sides of the page. It is defiantly a much better experience on a touch device though.

Jeff_Birt wrote:


I've updated the demo store to show the menus from one side of the screen (similar to the Settings menu in Windows 8)

Jeff_Birt wrote:

And fixed the above


Jeff_Birt wrote:

Would you say the overall experience is now improved or makes little difference?

What device are you using? It works fine on my ipad2, ipad4, and Samsung galaxy S (I-9000).

but for some reasons it's quite hard to click it on my another Samsung Galaxy S4 (I-9500) in the default browser, but it's possible. And it works fine if I use google chrome on this device.

The metro type theme is improved. The only thing I found a bit confusing was that I had to clear a menu by clicking the same menu button again. If the button on the far right is completely covered it might appear to the user that the website had 'locked up'.

I'm using a Surface Pro tablet (with 8.1 preview). I think the issue could be resolved if the menu times had click events that brought up a sub menu screen. This would work for both a mouse and touch interface. A hover event is not useful on a touch screen as your finger/hand is blocking you view.

Jeff_Birt wrote:

I found that the Surface was detected as a mobile device, I think the mobile code needs updating as the Surface uses desktop (laptop) 1366x768 resolution.

Jeff_Birt wrote:

Please have another look at the Categories Menu, how is it with sub-menu navigation?

I like how the submenus drop down. It seems very intuitive and is easy to use on a touch screen. I'm uncertain about its use on a non touch screen device as the user would have to move the mouse across the page after selecting a menu heading.

On the nopCommerce demo website the categories menu also works very well with touch as it pops open a sub menu ands also shows the submenus items in the center panel. The nopCommerce.cpm website itself does not work well, the menus that drop down on hover over just don't work well.

EDIT: One other issue that just crossed my mind is that Win8.1 preview includes IE11. I have noticed issues with how many websites are displayed w.r.t. IE10 but I don't think that has any bearing on the menu issue.

Thankyou Jeff for your input about the nopMetro.

I must apologize to Andrei/nopcommerce team for borrowing a thread about the nopCommerce.com website!

Is it my imagination or does the nopCommerce.com top menu bar now have a click even that holds the sub menu open?