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Subject:
From:
Alastair Campbell <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Alastair Campbell <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Tue, 26 Nov 2002 14:51:17 -0000
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William Hudson wrote:
> I think may main concern is that it moves away from the traditional
> "incremental" navigation that we are used to elsewhere.

I like the DHTML leaf navigations in some circumstances, but they can be
confusing because they don't conform to the page metaphor. I'm not
convinced that (regular) people think of the web in terms of pages, but
it means that a click does *not* change the page.

When testing a site with this type of navigation, I've seen some people
click on a heading-node, not notice the new options that drop down, and
wait for a page that isn't loading.

My preferred form of this navigation is usually done back-end, and just
produces regular HTML. The levels are displayed in a similar fashion to
the leaf menus, but work as regular links. I first remember seeing this
on the IBM ease of use site:
http://www-3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/
This form of navigation (and variations on it) have tested very well on
several sites we've done, including our own. There are visual and (in
our version) mark-up cues for the levels and current location.

Obviously with this type of navigation, you either need the
sub-homepages that Francois suggested, or to adjust the content to fit a
hierarchical structure. (Or a bit of both.)

>  the site is an intranet.

Ah, that could swing the balance back towards the DHTML style
navigation; assuming that efficiency is more important than ease of
learning on this intranet. Since each click doesn't load a new page,
people can navigate without waiting for each intermediate page.

Sorry if that confuses the issue! <g>

-Alastair

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