Having just created a design pattern library for my company, I'm pretty well-versed on these! There are actually two design patterns: accordions and show/hide panels. Accordions only allow one bar's contents to display at a time. These are usually used to show details for steps in a procedure, for example. Show/hide panels allow multiple bars' content to be shown at a time, relying on the user to click the bars to show/hide them. We have found that this works best for our interactions. One main use is to show detail for categories (the category name would be the bar title, then clicking on it would explain more about that category). In my opinion, I wouldn't automatically switch the selected bar. I wouldn't expect that behavior as a user. I don't have a strong opinion on hover-over. I think it would work well and if someone didn't realize that they could click on the bar title, but were mousing around the screen, they would discover that feature.
If you haven't already, check out welie.com for Martijn van Welie's great design pattern work or designinginterfaces.com for Jennifer Tidwell's. Courtney Jordan Senior User Experience Architect -----Original Message----- From: discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-boun...@lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of Kordian Piotr Klecha Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2009 9:51 AM To: disc...@ixda.org 1. Accordion auto-switches to the next part after every 5 seconds when mouse pointer is outside the box. 2. OnMouseOver any part-title bar opens this part (with latency 200ms). 3. Clicking on part-title bar opens it too. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
