Re: Navigation practices

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 18:07:30 +1200, Peter Jenkins wrote:

Is it considered OK to have differing styles of navigation for different types
of pages within a site

Consistancy is good -- not just within your site, but try to use
navigation ideas from other popular sites so that people will quickly
learn how yours works.

Read Jacob Nielsen's article "Is Navigation Useful?":

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000109.html

Short summary: don't go overboard on navigation. A link to the home page
from each page, a search box and a link to a site map is usually quite
sufficient for most users needs. Then maybe add links to a few related
pages.

*Don't* hide the link to the site map away. Some sites seem to place it in
the tiny print (along with copyright) at the bottom of the page. Put it
near the top: by the search box for example.

Another good idea is to make extensive use of the <link> element. For
people using browsers that support it (Mozilla, Opera, Lynx, etc) it is a
*big* help to navigation. For people using browser that don't (IE, NN4,
etc), it doesn't cause any harm.

Read more about <link> elements here:

http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/WWW/LINK/

Another thing: remember that navigation isn't just about providing links
to other parts of the site -- it's also about letting the user know where
they are now. Bread-crumb trails are a common and quite good way of doing
this. They give a good idea of how "deep" they are in the site as well as
what topics lie "above" where they are now.

But primarily:

* link to home page
* link to site map
* search box

on every page.



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