Accordions can provide flashy effects, but with regard to usability, when is it appropriate to use them? For example, in a menu tree with lots of options, an accordion can provide better overview of the categories. On the other hand, if I want to see all options available, I have to click around a lot.
When do you use accordions?
Thanks!
I avoid using them. Users know how to scroll, and they only limit what the user can do.
Perhaps for a home page rolling slideshow.
The key effect of an accordion is to make the view an either/or. So you might use it to show either a comment preview or the edit window, but then why not show both and let the user scroll?
I think a good reason to use them are when the user input methods are limited. With a mouse, accordions are pretty stupid. But with only keyboard/gamepad etc they can be pretty good.
An accordion is appropriate when you have an awful lot of entries in each category. Showing all of them will result in a really long menu that it will be impossible to navigate.
Note also that you can have "accordions" that don't display the options only for a single category. The user can select, which categories to expand and which not.
Consider a google map which has a panel overlay allowing you to choose from certain criteria to display points on the map
You are working withing the confines of the dimensions of the map but may have multiple categories of filters that you want to display. The categories you choose are directly linked to the map so to have them seperated from the map i.e. not in an overlay would present a usability and feedback on selection challenge
In this example it would make sense to use an accordion for example you may have a local area statistics map and your accordion might be organised by
Crime Statistics
Burglaries
Wealth Statistics
Rich
Poor
I would not use an accordion as a replacement for traditional vertical navigation
It's appropriate to use them when they are the right tool for the job. Clearly you understand their advantages and disadvantages, so play to their strengths. If you must have multiple sections open then avoid them. According to the jQuery docs If you want multiple sections open at once, don't use an accordion.
Use them if you want only one section open at a time. A great application of this can be seen in Magento's checkout process. Instead of moving the user from page to page while he's entering his data, selecting shipping, payment, etc they have it all on one page inside an accordion. The fact that they only want one section to be open at any one time is why they use it.
In our large content management application, accordions have proven to be a very effective organizational tool. What's nice about them is that you can quickly jump to what you're looking for without having to scroll to see what's available. However, I don't think they're worth using unless you've got a lot of controls.