Following my favorite sports teams shouldn’t be this difficult

I grew up in Wisconsin and, although I now live in Indiana, I still love reading news articles about the Green Bay Packers and University of Wisconsin Badgers. Since I don’t get a Wisconsin newspaper I usually resort to reading articles on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel web site. Ok, truth be told, even if I did live in Wisconsin, I still wouldn’t get a newspaper. It’s just too easy to read everything online.

But every time I go to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel web site, I get so frustrated at their site navigation. The web site has a series of menu links (ex: Home, News, Watchdog, Opinion, Sports, etc.) across the top. When you hover your mouse over one of them a second line of sub-menus appears below the first line. You then have to move your mouse left or right to hover over and click a sub-menu item.

If you think that sounds easy, it isn’t. While you are moving left and right over the sub-menus, if your hand strays just slightly north, you will hover over a new menu link on the top line which completely changes the sub-menu line. Then you have to start all over again.

It shouldn’t be this difficult

So to see news regarding the University of Wisconsin Badgers, I have to first hover my mouse over the Sports link on the main menu bar. This causes the sports sub-menu to appear. Then I have to skillfully move my mouse down and to the right until I am hovered over UW. Now mind you, UW is not the longest word which means there is not a lot of margin for error for floating your mouse over these letters.

If any noobies out there feel like backing up my claim to how annoying this is, I’d love to hear your feedback. Go to the web site and try following the Sports link to get to UW and let me know how difficult or easy it is for you.

A little trick I shouldn’t have to use

If you found it difficult, let me let you in on a little trick I eventually discovered. Once you select the Sports menu item and the sub-menu bar appears, drag your mouse down underneath the sub-menu bar and then move it left or right. When you finally get underneath the sub-menu item you want, carefully move your mouse up so it hovers over the correct sub-menu item.

Note to the web developers of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel web site. If the above trick sounds ridiculous, it is. But it’s your fault. You need to improve your site navigation. As I always tell my readers, if a techie struggles with it, what chances does a noobie have?