Ordering of category list in the menu

[fbender (Florian Bender)]

Continuing the discussion from The end of Clown Vomit, or, simplified category styles:

That might work better if the categories/subs flowed vertically down the columns, instead of wrapping left-to-right across two columns as they do. Your example ends up looking like below. I’m removing News/Global to illustrate the issue better.

|News             ||Local
||National        |Games
||Pong            ||Mortal Kombat
||Depression Quest

A little better:

|News             ||Pong
||Local           ||Mortal Kombat
||National        ||Depression Quest
|Games

Maybe better if a category didn’t break between columns.

This is indeed confusing as it currently stands. Though this is not easy to solve with the two-column-layout. E.g. in your example, the parent category is at the very bottom and the subcategories at the top of the next column. Is it possible to add a break that is aware of the structure and e.g. push “Games” into the next column?

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

Not quite following. Could you mock something up please?

[fbender (Florian Bender)]

Before:

After:

Is it clearer now?

[Mittineague]

So you are saying the sub-cats should be grouped with their parent cats in the drop-down menu?

[riking (Kane York)]

If you look closely, they already are - it’s just that the ordering is left-to-right then top-to-bottom.
The recommendation is top-to-bottom then left-to-right.