STAA Conference: Navigation

STAA Conference, Washington DC, January 2002

Navigation

• Navigation should follow the KISS principle:
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  • Many sites are like computer games where you have to learn its conventions by guesswork
• Build in redundancy:
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  • Make it clear enough that a novice will be able to navigate your site with ease
  • But provide enough shortcuts that the experienced user is not slowed down.
  • Repeat the alternatives at the bottom of the page in plain text.
  • Provide more than one navigation option.
  • Use both graphical and text-based navigation bars.
• Make a site map available from each page
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  • See the one on the Bhutan site
  • Or the more severely practical one on the ISE's Shakespeare's Life and Times
• Make frequently sought information the most accessible.
• Create "levels" where necessary, to start with simple and go to more complex text

Red check marks highlight points that will be of interest to established sites as well as new ones.