The problem with this method is that it confuses the user. I looked at this
site last night with your previous problem and was very surprised by the
action when I clicked on About AMCS.
Clicking on a navbar item should do what all other navbars do, take you to
the page.
Visually, you can see that the menu changed and nothing more but if you're
not looking at the screen you assume you have gone to the about page.
These things really should be done in a hover or onmouseover state so that a
click follows the link. Same with keyboard operation (tabbing through and
hitting enter).
I partly agree with you, I used this...
http://www.gazingus.org/html/Using_Lists_for_DHTML_Menus.html
...and decided I'd get in in place first before fiddling too much. Though I'm not sure the onmouseover reaction is necessarily a good idea, personally I find many of those menus a little off putting too especially if there is a lag. Certainly I need to look into it as I'm using it in an admin area and it's action is a little odd there. I think having the +/- or arrows found in outliners is one solution, i.e. splitting the folding and action of the link into separate elements.
How would a screen reader cope with this? You followed a link and then you've gone nowhere.
In fact in my tests with Lynx the menu functions fine so I'm guessing (big ?) a screen reader would to. Note if you turn off javascript that in fact the activating link simply reverts to being a link to the overview page (In Opera Mac however this all fails!). All of the items in that navigation list are linked they just change their action depending on the support of javascript.
BTW I really love the swell banner on http://www.underwater.com.au/
Actually, I have to pass the credit for the initial idea of that to another design firm http://www.nextwave.com.au . I simply restyled and updated it recently.
Thanks for commenting,
Nick
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