I Saw Two Mega Menus Today…

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One was the footer of an (older) U.S. Government website:

The other was the navigation for AWS services from the AWS Console:

A four column layout with a long list of white links in each column against a dark blue background.
It’s weird how much they use the word “Amazon” and “AWS” when you’re literally logged into AWS.

Both of them have that vibe of: holy crap we have a lot of stuff, I guess we’ll just make a massive grid of links to it all.

The difference is the AWS Console one has a search bar at the top of it. Its primary function is finding things in that menu (but it does search the wider site as well):

Showing a full-width search box with a dark blue background and the AWS logo pinned to the top of the screen, followed by search results for the term s3 and a list of filters to the left of it against a darker blue background.
They also have a “favorites” UI for saving the ones you use the most.

The “search a list of things already on the page” idea reminds me of that classic jQuery contains selector. Please allow me: