Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Where's the navigation?

Author:Matt Hooper
Posted:11/18/1999; 7:54:49 PM
Topic:Where's the navigation?
Msg #:13208
Prev/Next:13207 / 13209

I got a kick out of reading Jakob Nielen's "When Bad Design Elements Become the Standard" which briefly actually argues that "we might improve the usability of a site by 1% or so by having a navigation rail on the right rather than on the left". Jeez... 1%! :)

The interesting piece of this however is why this is an improvement; "Users always look at the content first when they encounter a new web page" and "it is always faster to click a target if it is closer to your starting position". If this is the case, why have navigation at the top or right of pages since content usually flows down and right (or left for some) and why have navigation that is fixed in place since you move about the conent of a page?

I guess context menus address this concept somewhat but not completely. Maybe navigation that follows your mouse pointer around would be useful, not to mention fun to watch! Has anyone seen such a thing?

Matt



There are responses to this message:

This page was archived on 6/13/2001; 4:53:34 PM.

© Copyright 1998-2001 UserLand Software, Inc.