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I’ve been a web developer for over seven years, and in that time I’ve been fortunate enough to see several bad ideas go out of fashion, including splash screens an

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

d unnecessary framesets. However, one really bad idea that seems to be hanging around is the use of JavaScript for dynamic navigation menus. This is bad for seve

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

al reasons – seven of the most obvious of which are listed below:

When navigation is not permanently displayed, it makes moving through a site difficult.<

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

strong>

One of the keys to making a site easy to use is giving visitors a clear indication of where in the site they are now, have been, and should go to next. G

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

od navigation will provide all of these things, but it’s impossible to accomplish using menus which only appear when the mouse is over them.

It can be hid

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

en by embedded elements, making navigation to some pages impossible.

Most dynamically-displaying navigation goes over the top of content which is already

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

visible. However some content, like embedded video and Flash animations, will not be hidden by the navigation bar, but stay on top, with the result that parts of

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

the navigation will be impossible to reach.

It's not guaranteed to work in all browsers.

Some browsers have stricter implementations of JavaScri

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

t than others, which means that while your code may work perfectly well in IE, you’d better be prepared for some serious testing to ensure that it works equally we

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

l in FireFox, Mozilla, Safari, Opera and other minority browsers. If your navigation is broken then so is your site.

It requires fine motor control and h

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

nd-eye co-ordination.

In common with most dynamic menu systems, like Windows’ own Start menu, getting around it requires practice and some skill with a m

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

ouse. If you have ever done a usability study with elderly users you will find that not everyone finds this easy. Windows does get one thing right; you can use i

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

fairly easily using just the arrow keys - not often the case with JavaScript navigation.

No major site uses it.

Google, Amazon, YouTube, BBC, M

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

N, Yahoo!, MySpace, eBay, Wikipedia, Craigslist, IMDB; you name them, they don’t use it.

There are better ways to accomplish the same thing.

One

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

good thing about JavaScript is that a single script file can contain the navigation for the entire site. When you update that file, the whole site’s navigation up

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

ates. However, this is also the case with any server-side scripting technology, outputting standard HTML, with none of the drawbacks listed here.

JavaScr

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

ipt can be easily turned off – then your site is broken!

Since JavaScript powers many of the things that are most unwelcome on the web, such as pop-ups

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

nd windows that refuse to close, some people turn it off (it’s easy to do by accessing the ‘Security’ tab in Internet Options). In that case, most dynamic navigat

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

on stops working, and in some cases the navigation bar disappears altogether. Statistics from W3Schools show that 10% of the visitors to your site will have JavaS

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

ript disabled. Since there’s no really good reason to use JavaScript for navigation, why even run the risk that your site will be unusable by 10% of your visitors

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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