Dropdown Menu Disappears When Navigating From Submenu to Main Menu

Store Design
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Topic summary

Issue: A dropdown menu collapses when moving the cursor from a submenu area (below “Featured”) back toward the main menu on a password-protected storefront.

Root causes identified:

  • Custom hover code adds nested event listeners repeatedly, leading to overlapping handlers and a memory leak. This can cause unstable open/close behavior.
  • Vertical menu + hover interaction conflict: when hovering off “Landscape,” it closes, shrinking the “Shop” menu height so the cursor exits the menu area, which then closes the dropdown.

Recommendations:

  • Refactor/override the custom code to ensure event listeners aren’t re-attached on each hover (one listener per element, clean up on unmount). A referenced code fix was noted, but the snippet wasn’t visible in the post.
  • Quick fixes: place the “Landscape” menu at the bottom to avoid height-shrink cascading; or redesign the interaction so submenus expand horizontally to the right instead of vertically.

Media/attachments: Multiple screenshots (prnt.sc links) illustrate the event-listener issue and hover-induced layout changes.

Status: The guidance was acknowledged as helpful; no confirmation of implementation or resolution yet (discussion remains open).

Summarized with AI on December 11. AI used: gpt-5.
2

It seems you’re implementing custom code to automatically open a list when hovering over an item. There are two issues with this custom code:

1. Event Listener Overlap Causes Memory Leak

The custom code is listening to nested events, which leads to memory leaks. Each time a user hovers over the menu, multiple event listeners are being added. (https://prnt.sc/cPMkjbmuj7t4)

Override your custom code to fix:

2. Vertical Menu Design Conflict with Hover Actions

For a vertical menu, using hover to toggle open/close actions isn’t ideal.
When a user hovers away from the Landscape menu, it automatically closes. This shortens the Shop menu’s height, causing the cursor to move outside the Shop menu area, which also closes it. (https://prnt.sc/BdFpASTSInig) (https://prnt.sc/fSZxrgPP1i5R)

  • Quick fixes: Move the Landscape Menu to the Bottom (https://prnt.sc/TltqhVnWaTus)
    This prevents the height adjustment issue from affecting other menus when hovering out.
  • Redesign the Menu for Horizontal Expansion: Change the menu’s behavior so that hovering over an item expands it horizontally to the right, instead of vertically.

Hope this guide is helpful to you! :blush:

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