on 3/8/00 10:50 PM, Jose Arcellana at [log in to unmask] wrote:


> Re handedness: there might be something there (usability testing we've done
> on enhanced TV interfaces suggests that viewers like navigation on the right
> because it kinda/sorta mimics hardware controls on TV sets -- those that
> still have them), but wouldn't that mean that most people would rather see
> navigation on the right?

A survey I'm doing on a large amount of Norwegian websites show that over 85
% of them keep their navigation to the left.

The main reason (as we know, or should be aware of)  lies in the fact that
users have different screen size and resolution. (Ranging from the laptop
12' inch with a 800x600 px res. to the 24' widescren 1600x1200 res.)

If you build a site with a fixed width size on 800 px, the problem arises
when the laptopuser wants to downssizes the browserwindow (maybye to get an
overview og the main objects on his or hers desktop which are organized to
the right): 

If the navigation lies to the left the user won't lose overview of the site.
If it is placed to the right - and the width is fixed to 800 px - the user
will lose this overview.

A solution to this problem would be for the browser not to scale from right
to left, but the oposite:

When you grab a window and downscales it it wil loose the information to the
left and keep the information to the right...

I haven't seen any program performing this way yet, but regarding the fact
that China has some 1.2 billion potential Internet users it wouldn't
surprise me.

Another solution would be to put the menu in an floating layer which follows
the users downsizing. The problem that will arise is that the navigation
layer will cover the content-layer.

Of course if you prefer not to fix the width of the site the problem only
arises when the user downsizes the window over 50-60% of the orignal size
(the text starts to be al litte diffcult to read).

And the agian you could say: Hey why even bother to have a menu? I'm a
HTML-Rant...

My survey shows that all of the sites fix their overall width, 92% fix the
tables. 70% use 640 px as a max width, 30% use 800 px.


-- 
andreas øwre | information architect | COIL as

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