Navigation

The problem of Web site navigation is conceptual, technical, spatial, philosophical and logistic. Consequently, solutions tend to call for complex improvisational combinations of art, science and organizational psychology.
-- Tim Horgan, Webmaster - Finding the Way.

Website Navigation	This page deals with how to design a website to optimise the user's experience and benefits from it. Especially oriented towards the "Information Architecture", i.e. designing the organization and navigation systems that help users find information, this topic is a meld of concepts from traditional architecture, library science, user interface design, and usability studies.
Navigation 101	by Charlie Morris. No matter how good a site looks, or how much useful information it offers, if it doesn't have a sensible navigation scheme, it will confuse visitors and chase them away. A simple, understandable navigation scheme can increase your number of page impressions, boost return visits, and improve your conversion rate. It's a critical aspect of site design that has a direct effect on the bottom line.
DHTML Pop-Up Menus	Cross-browser pop-up windows were this author's solution to making site navigation easier. This tutorial in walks you through the project of building your own DHTML menus.
Drop-down Menu	These can be processed by CGI, JavaScript, etc.
Frames	Enthusiastically adopted by many on their introduction by Netscape, there has been a backlash against them due to problems such as loss of screen space and user control.
Top 100	'Most Popular' lists help users to quickly locate your best pages - or at least they help you to know what your users were looking for.
Glossary	This is like the Encyclopaedia Britannica's 'micropaedia'. Terms are defined briefly, with generous cross-references and links to related pages in this or other sites. Not as popular as I'd expected :(
Search Engine	An essential item for all but the smaller sites.
Table of Contents	Typically a home page, as in our case. Best with two levels, i.e. main topic ares, and selected highlights within those areas.
Site Maps	A complete expansion of the 'Table of Contents'.
Image maps (client-side, server-side)	A very popular navigation aid, these clickable graphics can be used to help create a site identity and give visual impact. Unfortunately they also can add considerably to download time.
Drop-down menus (NS4 only; uses Layers)	Experimental.
Icons	Their meaning might not always be evident. Can you correctly guess what each of the following might mean ? These can offer an excellent way to spice up a web page, and provide navigation at the same time - used in moderation. Take care to not overdo it, although usually small (in byte size) a large number of them can significantly increase download time. It's not necessarily the total byte size that counts - each connection to a web server adds significantly to the time.