--- title: Breaking down Amazon’s mega dropdown (2013) | daily.dev description: Amazon's mega dropdown menu avoids the usual hover-delay hack by tracking the cursor's direction of movement, using an imaginary triangle projected from the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-amazon-s-mega-dropdown-2013--xbzjxbgj4 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Breaking down Amazon’s mega dropdown (2013) | daily.dev og:description: Amazon's mega dropdown menu avoids the usual hover-delay hack by tracking the cursor's direction of movement, using an imaginary triangle projected from the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-amazon-s-mega-dropdown-2013--xbzjxbgj4 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/xBZJxbGj4.png og:image:alt: Breaking down Amazon’s mega dropdown (2013) og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Breaking down Amazon’s mega dropdown (2013) **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 3 min read · 1 upvotes · 2 comments ## Summary Amazon's mega dropdown menu avoids the usual hover-delay hack by tracking the cursor's direction of movement, using an imaginary triangle projected from the cursor toward the submenu's corners to decide when to keep the current submenu open. The author reverse-engineers this technique and releases a jQuery plugin, jQuery-menu-aim, that fires events based on this directional detection, which was adopted in Khan Academy's own dropdown menu. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### How does Amazon's dropdown menu avoid the delay needed by most submenu hover menus? It detects the direction of the cursor's movement instead of using a fixed timer. At each cursor position, a triangle is formed between the current mouse position and the upper and lower right corners of the dropdown menu; as long as the next mouse position falls inside that triangle, the currently displayed submenu stays open, even if the cursor briefly passes over another menu item. _See how developers discuss implementing responsive hover menus like this on daily.dev._ ### Is there a jQuery plugin for detecting directional mouse movement toward a submenu? Yes, jQuery-menu-aim is an open-source jQuery plugin that fires events when it detects this kind of directional menu aiming, mimicking the triangle-based cursor detection used by Amazon's mega dropdown. It was built by reverse-engineering Amazon's hover behavior and was adopted in Khan Academy's own dropdown menu implementation. _Developers evaluating dropdown UX libraries can compare approaches like jQuery-menu-aim on daily.dev._ ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@agustinbarrientos** · 0 upvotes > I prefer the cursor triangle to a blunt hover delay because it preserves intent without making every submenu wait, even thirteen years later. **@rizzdev** · 0 upvotes > Still works great on desktop. The caveat is touch — hover-based detection does nothing there, so you end up needing the delay anyway on mobile. The triangle buys you clean intent on one input mode, not all of them ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Popover Context Menus with Anchor Positioning – Frontend Masters Blog](https://daily.dev/posts/popover-context-menus-with-anchor-positioning-frontend-masters-blog-hwayozyfy) · Frontend Masters · 1 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#javascript](https://daily.dev/tags/javascript), [#ui-ux](https://daily.dev/tags/ui-ux), [#jquery](https://daily.dev/tags/jquery) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-amazon-s-mega-dropdown-2013--xbzjxbgj4) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Breaking down Amazon’s mega dropdown (2013)","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-amazon-s-mega-dropdown-2013--xbzjxbgj4","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-amazon-s-mega-dropdown-2013--xbzjxbgj4"},"datePublished":"2026-09-01T14:10:28.597Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T06:45:56.521Z","description":"Amazon's mega dropdown menu avoids the usual hover-delay hack by tracking the cursor's direction of movement, using an imaginary triangle projected from the...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--CxzD6vbw--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2005","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--CxzD6vbw--/f_auto/v1722860399/public/Placeholder%2005","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":2,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-amazon-s-mega-dropdown-2013--xbzjxbgj4","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":1},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}],"keywords":"javascript,ui-ux,jquery","timeRequired":"PT3M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Breaking down Amazon’s mega dropdown (2013)"}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-amazon-s-mega-dropdown-2013--xbzjxbgj4","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","text":"I prefer the cursor triangle to a blunt hover delay because it preserves intent without making every submenu wait, even thirteen years later.","datePublished":"2026-09-02T02:23:56.127Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/xBZJxbGj4#c-0IieJfbbt","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Agustin Barrientos","url":"https://daily.dev/agustinbarrientos","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--5ayxQnqn--/f_auto/v1788281802/avatars/avatar_wQYYVe5Tbj0NJ7C7qPoa8?_a=BAMAMicg0"}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Still works great on desktop. The caveat is touch — hover-based detection does nothing there, so you end up needing the delay anyway on mobile. The triangle buys you clean intent on one input mode, not all of them","datePublished":"2026-09-02T17:27:05.009Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/xBZJxbGj4#c-SmjghMf53","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Andrew","url":"https://daily.dev/rizzdev","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--35vRfXAA--/f_auto/v1785413727/avatars/avatar_fQ7ttCKtPuu6tDvcgQXv5?_a=BAMAMicg0"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"FAQPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-down-amazon-s-mega-dropdown-2013--xbzjxbgj4#faq","mainEntity":[{"@type":"Question","name":"How does Amazon's dropdown menu avoid the delay needed by most submenu hover menus?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"It detects the direction of the cursor's movement instead of using a fixed timer. 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